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Difficult lives explain depression better than broken brains

Molecular Psychiatry volume 29, pages 206–209 (2024)Cite this article

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Human beings are organisms with brains who have emotions and agency. The nature and size of our brains is what gives us these capacities, but our feelings and our behaviour are not best understood as simply the property of our brains. They are the properties of us as whole human beings immersed in our social world [1]. Inappropriately ascribing feelings, thoughts, preferences and other characteristics of humans to the brain is known as the mereological fallacy [2]. For example, the association between activation of certain areas of the brain and ‘liking the Beatles’ could be studied, but this preference is more likely to be understood by examining the relationships and experiences associated with this music in the person’s life. The same applies to feelings of despair and hopelessness.

First it is worth stating that none of the four correspondents [3,4,5,6] challenge the conclusion of our umbrella review [7] which was that we found ‘no support for the hypothesis that depression is caused by lowered serotonin activity or concentrations.’

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Psychiatry, University College London, London, UK

    Joanna Moncrieff & Mark A. Horowitz

  2. Research and Development Department, North East London NHS Foundation Trust (NELFT), Rainham, UK

    Joanna Moncrieff & Mark A. Horowitz

  3. NIHR Mental Health Policy Research Unit, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, London, UK

    Ruth E. Cooper

  4. Praevmedic, Zürich, Switzerland

    Tom Stockmann

  5. Department of Applied Psychology, Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Zurich, Switzerland

    Simone Amendola & Michael P. Hengartner

Authors
  1. Joanna Moncrieff
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  2. Ruth E. Cooper
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  3. Tom Stockmann
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  4. Simone Amendola
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  5. Michael P. Hengartner
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  6. Mark A. Horowitz
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Contributions

JM and MH wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All other authors substantially contributed to edits and revisions of the manuscript. All authors have approved the final version of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joanna Moncrieff.

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Competing interests

JM receives royalties for three books about psychiatric drugs, and is a co-applicant on the REDUCE trial, funded by the National Institute of Health Research, evaluating digital support for patients stopping long-term antidepressant treatment. She is co-chairperson of the Critical Psychiatry Network (an informal group of psychiatrists) and a board member of the unfunded organisation, the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry. Both are unpaid positions. MAH reports being a co-founder of Outro Health which aims to provide digital support for patients in the US to help stop no longer needed antidepressant treatment using gradual, hyperbolic tapering. MAH and JM are both co-applicants on the RELEASE and RELEASE+ trials in Australia evaluating hyperbolic tapering of antidepressants against tapering as usual. MAH is also an Associate of the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal (IIPDW) and a member of the Critical Psychiatry Network. RC is a Board Member of the International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal (IIPDW); this is an unpaid position. MPH receives royalties from Palgrave Macmillan for a book about antidepressants. Other authors report no potential conflicts of interest.

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Moncrieff, J., Cooper, R.E., Stockmann, T. et al. Difficult lives explain depression better than broken brains. Mol Psychiatry 29, 206–209 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-024-02462-3

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