Top all-time · #15935
Joanna Moncrieff
Personal blog · joannamoncrieff.comhealthscience
Joanna Moncrieff's personal blog at joannamoncrieff.com covers health and science. Since 2017, 5 different Hacker News readers have linked it 5 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-31, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Joanna Moncrieff's posts on psychiatry and psychiatric drugs, especially her critique of the chemical imbalance theory of depression. Commenters cite her as a source for that view.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Available from: https://lnk.to/chemicallyimbalanced For decades now the public has been told that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance and that antidepressants work by targeting this mechanism. Millions of people have decided to take antidepressants based on this information.Chemically Imbal
Most-linked posts?
- /2014/05/01/the-chemical-imbalance-theory-of-depression-still-promoted-but-still-unfounded/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2017-05-25
What Hacker News says?
There is a movement within psychiatry that wants to take a view similar to yours, although it is very much in a minority. I would point to figures such as the British psychiatrists Sami Timimi [1] and Joanna Moncrieff [2], associated with the groups "Council for Evidence-Based Psychiatry" [3] and "Critical Psychiatry Network" [4]. The emphasise the ideas that psychotropic medications are overprescribed (they are not…
Comment linking /
on “Anxiety, depression, and PTSD may be adaptive responses to adversity: study”The "Chemical Imbalence Theory", although heavely popular and promoted, is largely unfounded on science: https://joannamoncrieff.com/2014/05/01/the-chemical-imbalanc...
Comment linking /2014/05/01/the-chemical-imbalance-theory-of-depression-still-promoted-but-still-unfounded/
on “Many People Taking Antidepressants Discover They Cannot Quit”I wasn't aware that the serotonin hypothesis was "fraudulent," nor can I find credible evidence of this on Google. Instead, it seems that the scientific process worked as intended. A reasonable hypothesis was initially proposed, then opposing evidence accumulated over time. This seems moreso an issue with the pharmaceutical industry. For example: "In 2005, two academics published a piece of research in which they co…
Comment linking /2022/07/24/how-to-take-the-news-that-depression-has-not-been-shown-to-be-caused-by-a-chemical-imbalance/
on “How to get a PhD in mathematics in a timely fashion (2020) [pdf]”It's a neat categorization to say troubling psychiatric practices are in the past - I don't think it's accurate. An example apart from how Psychiatry profits from inserting itself into the legal system - we have society-wide acceptance of the chemical imbalance theory of depression - still without evidence. Because this model is a billions-of-dollars money pipeline for drug companies, who take the bad PR on the nose…
Comment linking /2014/05/01/the-chemical-imbalance-theory-of-depression-still-promoted-but-still-unfounded/
on “Feds probing psychiatric hospitals for locking in patients to boost profits”Amen. Yeah statistics never say much (they always say a lot less than basic common sense). Interesting side note unrelated to the VR part: although I'm all for moderate recreational psychedelic use (or not moderate...you do you), it seems there's a weird rebranding of psychedelics being done by the pharmaceutical industry (who is now repackaging and selling psychedelics, e.g. esketamine). I think what is happening i…
Comment linking /2021/09/02/psychedelics-the-new-psychiatric-craze/
on “VR is as good as psychedelics at helping people reach transcendence”