6 Comments

Thank you for this very helpful article! I particularly like how you connected your economic analysis with the alleged debunking of SSRIs. As you note, neuroscientists never said that depression was caused solely by low serotonin; that was a media misunderstanding (or misrepresentation). It’s useful to listen to people who actually know something about a topic!

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One thing about Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it, but those editing it are more committed to their truth. I edit Wikipedia but on non-controversial topics usually. At the top of each page is a "watch" tab that alerts you if a page you watch has been changed. The "team" with the most determined editors usually wins. Also, since one has to cite an article to make a point the side with more published articles gets the final say. I can't, for example, cite this Substack article because Wikipedia won't allow citations to websites (stupid) but the weight of truth lies in academic journals, so it is sort of a loaded process.

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Aug 7, 2022Liked by Klaus

All I can say about the SSRI is based on my own experience of 25 years trying to solve my own depression and anxiety. All the docs tried every one of those on me and none of them worked. I chose to use exercise and then they finally also suggested Wellbutrin. I would suggest also that people such as myself have spent their lives I’m 46, researching as much as possible what could be the cause or the solution to their symptoms. The stats on how many people are given SSRI’s and not the aforementioned Wellbutrin and other drugs are not balanced. They use the ssri so much more it doesn’t even compare. So while it’s true that those other drugs exist with the same mixed results that the SSRI, the have (which is close to placebo, )

the point I consider valuable is that they prescribed something with flimsy evidence, possibly missing the correct target and peoples results weren’t that much better than nothing at all. ... I’m just answering off the cuff here so there’s that.

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Aug 7, 2022Liked by Klaus

Thanks. As a “shoulda majored in math” retired clergyman then lawyer (and relatively newly obsessed stock market addict), I appreciated the ability to exercise my amateur geek. Informative and enjoyable.

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This is a topic about which I know basically nothing, so this post was very interesting. Thanks!

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