The Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 301 No. 23, June 17, 2009.
“This meta-analysis yielded no evidence that the serotonin transporter genotype alone or in interaction with stressful life events is associated with an elevated risk of depression in men alone, women alone, or in both sexes combined.”
What This New Study Means
This means that research claiming that “depression” has a genetic cause is flawed; there is no credible evidence that depression is genetic and linked to serotonin transport, which also calls into serious question claims that SSRI drugs [selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors] have any valid use for depression.
In fact, there is no medical illness called “depression.” While it is true that people do have problems for which they may need help, the psychiatric diagnosis of a mental illness called depression disorder is fraudulent since it is based solely on subjective criteria (for example, asking a person if they are depressed); there are no clinical tests for depression — no blood tests, no urine tests, no genetic markers, no x-rays, no brain scans. And thus the prescription of addictive and harmful psychotropic drugs for this non-existent illness is also fraudulent and done just for money.
What Should Be Done About It
So how do you help someone who says they are depressed? That’s fairly easy — you find out exactly what their problem is and fix that.
The solution is proper medical care. Article 3 of CCHR’s Mental Health Declaration of Human Rights states that any patient has “The right to have a thorough physical and clinical examination by a competent registered general practitioner of one’s choice, to ensure that one’s mental condition is not caused by any undetected and untreated physical illness, injury or defect, and the right to seek a second medical opinion of one’s choice.”
CCHR has long been an advocate for competent, non-psychiatric, medical evaluation of people with mental problems. Undiagnosed and untreated physical conditions can manifest as “psychiatric” symptoms. In 1982, CCHR campaigned for Senate Bill 929 in California that established a pilot project to provide medical evaluation of people in public psychiatric hospitals. Subsequently, the California Department of Mental Health Medical Evaluation Field Manual—which CCHR assisted in introducing—stated: â€Mental health professionals working within a mental health system have a professional and a legal obligation to recognize the presence of physical disease in their patients…physical diseases may cause a patient’s mental disorder [or] may worsen a mental disorder.”
More information about non-abusive alternatives to psychiatric treatment is available here.