The False Promise of Antidepressants | Dr. Joanna Moncrieff

American Thought Leaders · Jan 30, 2026 · 41m

Dr. Joanna Moncrieff is a British psychiatrist and author of “Chemically Imbalanced: The Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth.” She challenges the long-held belief that depression is caused by a lack of the hormone serotonin.

“The serotonin myth … was first put out there in the 1960s, then picked up by the pharmaceutical industry in the 1990s and widely propagated by them as part of their campaign to sell SSRIs, their new generation of antidepressants,” she said.

Contrary to what many people still believe, there’s no evidence that depression is caused by a lack of serotonin in the brain…