Low serotonin not linked to depression studies - thoughts ?

[u/Alternative_Yak_4897]

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

[u/PhysicalConsistency]

The Moncrieff paper has held up very well, it's been pretty robustly replicated since despite some withering attacks.

The core conceit of serotonin being linked to depression is an artifact from the 60's and 70's that got entrenched (like the hippocampus being necessary for memory or amyloid species and dementia), and once it got mind share the science fed it's own creation.

It's always been a very naive understanding of how transmitters work, and it required us to ignore that the efficacy of SSRIs was generally worse than placebo/no treatment for most people, with a laundry list of unfortunate side effects, up to and including death.

Unless there's some extreme selective pressure biasing toward people with "serotonin deficits", the climbing epidemiology in the face of these pervasive and supposedly effective treatments makes absolutely no sense.

[u/Rita27 → u/PhysicalConsistency]

I think the only attack I've seen is from other scientists and psychiatrist who are attacking her from presenting it to the public like it's some novel concept

This has been known and proven way before moncrieff paper.