There are many criticisms of the field of Psychiatry.
Scientific Review
Psychiatric Diagnoses
Psychiatric diagnoses have been proven to be consistently unreliable for any scientific usage.
Psychiatric diagnoses do not use and require any objective analysis; lack scientific research to justify the criteria for the disorders; and do not hold discernible consistent criteria. Most psychiatric disorders are diagnosed through subjective analysis by a psychiatrist.
Major Depression Disorder
The treatments for Major Depression Disorders are not effective; and are as effective as alternative therapies.[1]
Psychiatric Drugs
Psychiatric drugs have been repeatedly proven to be unreliable in accomplishing their goals (defined by companies) and dangerous to the human body.
Pharmaceutical companies manipulate the bias of the studies to favor psychiatric drugs.
Antidepressants
Antidepressants are negligibly more effective than placebo drugs.[1][2][3]
Chemical Imbalance Theory
The chemical imbalance theory is a quack theory which suggested that a lack of serotonin causes Major Depression Disorder. It was generated by pharmaceutical marketing campaigns for antidepressants around the 1970s.
The chemical imbalance theory has since been disproved.[4] Major Depression Disorder has also been found to have scare objective biomarkers and biological models.[5]
Psychiatrists Andrew McIntosh[6], Christopher Davey[7], and Genetic Epidemiologist Cathryn Lewis[6] have responded to the study by claiming that antidepressants still work regardless if the chemical imbalance theory is wrong.
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Arif Khan, James Faucett, Pesach Lichtenberg, Irving Kirsch, Walter A. Brown (2012). A Systematic Review of Comparative Efficacy of Treatments and Controls for Depression. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0041778 [HUB]
- ↑ Andrea Cipriani, Toshi A Furukawa (2018). Comparative efficacy and acceptability of 21 antidepressant drugs for the acute treatment of adults with major depressive disorder: a systematic review and network meta-analysis. Lancet. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(17)32802-7 [HUB]
- ↑ Arif Khan, Walter A. Brown (2015). Antidepressants versus placebo in major depression: an overview. World Psychiatry. doi: 10.1002/wps.20241 [HUB]
- ↑ Joanna Moncrieff, Ruth E. Cooper, Tom Stockmann (2022). The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence.. [PDF] Molecular Psychiatry. doi: 10.1038/s41380-022-01661-0 [HUB]
- ↑ Mark Horowitz, Joanna Moncrieff. Prospective biomarkers of major depressive disorder: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Molecular Psychiatry. doi: 10.1038/s41380-019-0585-z [HUB]
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Andrew M McIntosh, Cathryn Lewis (2022-07-22). "Depression: low serotonin may not be the cause – but antidepressants still work" The Conversation.
- ↑ Christopher Davey (2022-08-02). "The chemical imbalance theory of depression is dead, but that doesn’t mean antidepressants don’t work" The Conversation.