So I know that I’m supposed to cover the Most Censored News and the fact that massive new studies show antidepressants don’t do nearly what we were told they do is on the cover of Newsweek does not exactly count as the most censored news. But I’ll get to the censored part in a minute.
Newsweek reports, “In 2019, one in eight Americans—43 million in all—were taking a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI), and those numbers have likely risen among a public ridden with COVID-induced anxiety.”
In fact, over the past few years, so many people were demanding Zoloft that the FDA warned there would be a shortage.
Think about that, one in eight Americans are on antidepressants, and assuming almost all of those people are 18 or older, 43 million is actually one in every six American adults. That is insane.
You might be wondering how they found out antidepressants barely do anything. Newsweek explains, “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration …published the most comprehensive analysis to date… The study, which examined… 73,388 patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder, suggested that the active ingredients in 10 of the most popularly prescribed antidepressant medications made a meaningful difference in only 15 percent of the patients… almost always in those patients suffering from the most severe depression.”
So if you had severe depression and antidepressants have helped you, then don’t worry. You very well may be part of the 15 percent. But the rest of the people might be enjoying that sweet placebo effect, which means they could’ve saved a lot of money by buying Tic-Tacs and putting them in a prescription bottle. Or by hiring a friend to wear a lab coat and force unmarked pills down their throat, as we do with dogs.
But the study clearly “debunks the basis upon which pharmaceutical companies marketed drugs like Prozac, Lexapro and Zoloft to consumers for decades: namely, the idea that depression is associated with deficits in the concentrations or activity of the brain chemical serotonin.”
A chemical imbalance of serotonin does not cause depression. Essentially, Big Pharma invented that idea just to sell pills. Because if people believe their problem is simply chemical and can be solved with a pill, then they will take that pill, often for years.
However, if they are told, “Your problem is that your father died and you have a lot of stress in your life and your hamster’s a dick and your girlfriend loves scented candles more than she loves you and that’s why you’re depressed.” Then patients are WAY less likely to believe a pill is the answer.
But yes, studies have also shown that depression is more often caused by – prepare to contain your shock – life events.
When the drugs work, they do so “by ‘superimposing’ an abnormal drug state over other effects. In SSRIs, the small advantages seen… can be attributed to emotional numbing that reduces the intensity of feelings…”
So basically they just numb everything, which also might include your depression.
Watch the full report above.
Lee Camp is an American stand-up comedian, writer, actor and activist. Camp is the host of Behind The Headlines’ new series: The Most Censored News With Lee Camp. He is a former comedy writer for the Onion and the Huffington Post and has been a touring stand-up comic for 20 years.