“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” – Victor Frankl In a recent interview with Tim Ferriss, author and business strategist Greg McKeown talked about a concept he called, “The Lighter Path.”…

During my decade and a half of deep depression, my mother often said to me, “Honey, you can choose not to be depressed.” To which I responded, seething, “Depression isn’t a choice. Why would I choose this? I can’t just turn it on and off.” And then I’d huff out of the room and stew…

This is the last installment of Debunking the Chemical Imbalance Theory of Depression. The previous installments can be found here: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV With social media at the forefront of 21st-century communication, there is a tendency for non-experts to argue with one another via evidence-based research. Having…

Part I—The History of Chemical Imbalance Theory Part II—The Flaws of Chemical Imbalance Theory Part III—Pharmaceutical Advertising & Chemical Imbalance Theory At this point in our journey, you’re probably coming around to the idea that the chemical imbalance theory is flawed at best and an outright lie at worst. Although it’s been disproven over and…

This is the third installment of an ongoing series debunking the chemical imbalance theory of depression. Part I examines the history of the theory while Part II examines its fatal flaws. Part III looks at the history of pharmaceutical advertising. Antidepressants are a $26.25 billion dollar industry. If the industry as a whole was a…

This is Part II of Debunking the Chemical Imbalance theory. Part I can be found here. Psychiatry, like most hard sciences, suffers as research trickle down from laboratories to the mainstream. Take our friend from Part I, Harvard neuropsychopharmacologist Joseph Schildkraut, who said in 1965 that the chemical imbalance theory was “at best a reductionistic…