The Case For and Against Antidepressants

Janov's reflections on the Human Condition: The Case For and Against Antidepressants

Thursday, August 18, 2011
The Case For and Against Antidepressants


There is polemic going on in the magazines about the use of antidepressant medication. It seems like the case against them is gaining ground. The Week magazine (July 29/11) seems to feel that they are useless. Worse, no one knows how they work or where in the brain. And in some studies they are about equal to placebos.

It all gets confusing, more so when there is no real understanding about what depression is. So allow me to enter the fray. Depression is repression elevated to great heights due to the onslaught of very early trauma and is a counterpart repression. The deeper the depression the more likely it emanates from our life before birth at even at birth. It is, in effect, massive global repression. And what happens is that catastrophic imprinted pain has to be repressed continuously; and in the service of repression there is an exhaustion of serotonin (and other inhibitors) supplies. Thus, it may be possible during life in the womb that our set-points for serotonin are very low and remain so throughout our lives. Naturally, then we grow up needing outside help to boost our supplies of key inhibitory medication. We may take any one of the SSRI’s to enhance serotonin. Those repressors lighten the burden of a system overloaded with pain. They help ease the load and lend a shoulder to the gating system. So do they do any good? Of course, if we are simply helping normalize supplies; all of these key mental medications do is mimic what the brain normally does all of the time. But when the system is overloaded the brain cannot function normally. Then we need outside help.

So how is it that placebos do almost as good as SSRIs? Because thru suggestion we produce the very same painkilling chemicals that we do with real medication. That is why it is so easy to sell hope. The dispensers of booga booga nearly always get rich because their ideas, now inculcated into us, cause the dispensation of pain- killing chemicals. And we think that the phony product really works. It isn’t the product it is the vendor. It isn’t that phony and neutral medications work as well as real ones; it is that the suggestion or implication that accompanies giving the placebo works in the brain to manufacture neuroinhibitors which enhance gating. So it is hope again, sold in the form of implication, “This ought to do the job.” That is why cults and religion works so well; that dispense hope; the dispenser is the cult and the leader. He actually controls the pain of the worshiper. He tells us he is making a better world for us but meanwhile we are obliged to make a better world for him (and it is most often males) by giving him our money and possessions.

So now there is the assumption that we are dealing with a chemical imbalance; and if we are satisfied to deal with only surface appearances then it is true. There is an imbalance which is only part of the story. What causes it is what is not obvious and what is not seen or even imagined. If a theory doesn’t allow for deeper events then it will never be seen. And here again we have cognitive therapy dealing only with what is current and obvious, but not really true.

Without a proper theory and a bit of science, to boot, one can give into the notion that these drugs do help only slightly. If we don’t know how deep the pain lies, and if we don’t know that ideas produce painkillers, and if we don’t know that ideas that contain hope work the same way in the brain as true medications, then we will never understand how to deal with depression. Too often we just address each new medication de novo, as something new and unrelated and we do not place it into a gestalt context (meaning an overview). There are those who swear that anti-depressive medication has helped them. And it does by normalizing the balance that the system should do on its own. Overload of pain prevents it. Helping the system produce enough to make us feel better is all it is about.
Posted by Arthur Janov
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