Chemical Imbalance Myth May Have Led to Thousands of Deaths

Many lives may have been lost due to the mental health industry’s mass marketing of the “chemical imbalance theory.”

A July 2022 University College London study has completely debunked the unproven theory that a “chemical imbalance in the brain” causes depression. Yet the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry embraced this claim as part of a mass marketing campaign that generated antidepressant sales of $15 billion a year. This bogus campaign was so successful that more than 100 million people worldwide took antidepressants each year to treat a nonexistent chemical imbalance.

The consequences have been devastating. About a decade ago, the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) Adverse Drug Reaction database recorded 4,769 completed suicides linked to antidepressants over an eight-year period. As the FDA conceded that only one to 10 percent of side effects are reported to it, the likelihood is that tens of thousands of people lost their lives during that time, and many more since. For example, in January 2017, a 14-year-old girl in foster care in Florida hung herself live on Facebook. An investigation revealed that her dose of antidepressants was doubled 45 days prior to her suicide.

Mass shootings and acts of violence add to the catalog of deaths linked to antidepressants. A Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) exposé, Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence & Suicide, details more than 60 mass shootings or acts of violence committed by those taking or withdrawing from prescribed psychotropic drugs. For example, in 2013, a 12-year-old boy opened fire at Sparks Middle School in Nevada. He killed a teacher, wounded two classmates and then took his own life. He had been prescribed an antidepressant, which the coroner found in his system at the time of death.

Beyond suicide and deaths, the carnage caused by antidepressants includes violence, emotional numbness and addiction. These very side effects are now part of black box warnings for these drugs. For example, international drug regulatory agency warnings on antidepressants report dozens of cautions about how these drugs can cause suicide risk or suicidal behavior, self-harm, hallucinations, psychosis leading to violence, cardiovascular disorders and other heart problems. Further, thousands of cases have suffered from drug withdrawal syndrome.

But the mental health industry watchdog Citizens Commission on Human Rights has been exposing psycho-pharmaceutical industry and psychiatric fraud for decades. In addition to its report, Psychiatric Drugs Create Violence & Suicide, CCHR offers consumers, policymakers and media a clearinghouse website for further information on the chemical imbalance hoax and the risks posed by antidepressants. The CCHR website also contains expert comments and articles, study citations, media exposés spanning decades, as well as a searchable psychiatric drugs side effects database to access international drug regulatory agency warnings about antidepressants and other prescribed psychotropics.

“Slowly, the scientific community is finally acknowledging what CCHR and others have been saying for decades—that there is no medical test to confirm a mental health diagnosis, and a chemical imbalance causing mental disorder does not exist,” said Jan Eastgate, President of CCHR International. “Consumers can now be truthfully informed.”