The modern biological era of psychiatry began with the 1987 release of Prozac--the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI. Other popular SSRIs have followed, including Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, and Lexapro, and they remain the most commonly used class of antidepressants. You might think that they work by "correcting a chemical imbalance," right? Well, no such chemical imbalance has been proven to exist--and nowadays there are psychiatrists on Twitter arguing that psychiatrists never made that claim! Dr. Minot is old enough to remember when they most certainly did--and shares his own hypothesis as to how these drugs might really work....
The modern biological era of psychiatry began with the 1987 release of Prozac--the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, or SSRI. Other popular SSRIs have followed, including Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, and Lexapro, and they remain the most commonly used class of antidepressants. You might think that they work by "correcting a chemical imbalance," right? Well, no such chemical imbalance has been proven to exist--and nowadays there are psychiatrists on Twitter arguing that psychiatrists never made that claim! Dr. Minot is old enough to remember when they most certainly did--and shares his own hypothesis as to how these drugs might really work....