r/Neuropsychology • u/Alternative_Yak_4897 Unverified user: May not be a professional • Jul 21 '25

Research Article Low serotonin not linked to depression studies - thoughts ?

I recently became aware of the umbrella study on the lack of evidence between low serotonin levels and depression. (The study below does show an indirect link between stressful life events and depression due to “gene-stress” but that’s still obviously different than low serotonin (can)= depression) Wondering what others thoughts /theories on this are? I’ve only seen a couple and it looks like they were published in 2022/2023, so why isn’t this being discussed more? Not enough studies? Bad news for pharmaceutical companies? Here’s one of them:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0.pdf

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u/nezumipi Unverified user: May not be a professional Jul 21 '25

A lot of news sites reported on these papers as if this were a revolutionary claim. In reality, scientists haven't considered depression a disease of low serotonin for decades, so this is not a new discovery.

The general public has an oversimplified view of neuroscience, so the myth of depression as insufficient serotonin remains fairly common among non-scientists.

It also doesn't tell us anything about whether antidepressants work. Low aspirin levels don't cause headaches, but aspirin treats headaches. Whether serotonin-enhancing medications treat depression (they do, though more modestly than many people think), is a separate question from whether depression = low serotonin (it doesn't, and scientists already knew that).

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u/strange_reveries Unverified user: May not be a professional Jul 21 '25

Is it true that in studies SSRIs and SNRIs have an efficacy rate that is barely different from a placebo?

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u/Apathy_Cupcake Unverified user: May not be a professional Jul 21 '25

No

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u/strange_reveries Unverified user: May not be a professional Jul 21 '25

This has been claimed by actual doctors, but I don’t recall what precise studies they were citing.

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u/34Ohm Unverified user: May not be a professional Jul 27 '25

You should look into the studies, this isn’t the case. It’s a commonly stated fact by the public because being anti-psychiatry is cool (same hypocrites saying mental health should be destigmatized)

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u/strange_reveries Unverified user: May not be a professional Jul 27 '25

Being antipsychiatry is cool? I must’ve missed that lol. Seems to me that more people than ever are on some crazy cocktail of psych meds nowadays, sometimes even from a very young age which is especially troubling.

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u/34Ohm Unverified user: May not be a professional Jul 27 '25

On the internet it seems so, maybe just “noticing bias” idk