2
Psychiatrist Ronald Pies, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the Psychiatric Times. Pies stated: “In truth, the ‘chemical imbalance’ notion was always a kind of urban legend—never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists."
". Following the observation that psychiatric drugs act on neurotransmitter systems, which was first documented in the 1960s, it started to be proposed that an abnormality in these systems might be the cause of psychiatric disorders. The best-known example of this way of thinking is the dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia. The idea that depression is caused by a deficiency of serotonin or noradrenalin is another example, sometimes referred to as the ‘monoamine theory’ of depression (serotonin and noradrenalin are both classified as monoamine-type neurotransmitters). Although scientists acknowledge that these are merely theories, which are far from being proven, there is a widespread public perception that the biochemical origins of various psychiatric disorders have been established." -- English Psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff
Bookmarks