Hacker News Reader

What if they weren't sad? What if they were depressed, but the cause of their depression was situational rather than a chemical imbalance? Isn't that possible?

View on HN

Didn't recent research show that's it's usually not a simple case of "chemical imbalance". So, antidepressants on their own won't do much. Maybe getting kicked out of this "unhealthy homeostasis" by medications helps some people find new ways of coping/perceiving their life, but AFAIK that's not the default case. So, they should be administered with therapy (and no, I don't consider therapy seeing them once every two months to renew your subscription lol)

No one in recent history thought it was a chemical imbalance. But there was a recent paper on it yes.

Here's a real mind bender. In social anxiety (at least), people on the same antidepressants will have detectable differences in neurochemicals based on if they were told the pills would work, or won't work.

Mind bender.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-021-01682-3

Reply on news.ycombinator.com