Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health30 Huhti 2025

Chemically Imbalanced: Joanna Moncrieff on the Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth

Welcome to this Mad in America podcast. My name is Robert Whitaker, and I'm happy today to have the pleasure of speaking with Joanna Moncrieff.

Dr. Moncrieff is a psychiatrist who works in the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. She is a Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College, London.

In 1990 she co-founded the Critical Psychiatry Network, which today has about 400 psychiatrist members, about two-thirds of whom are in the United Kingdom. From my perspective, the Critical Psychiatry Network has been at the forefront of making a broad critique of the disease model of care. Without this network, I don't think that critique would be anywhere near as prominent or as sophisticated as it is today.

Dr. Moncrieff is a prolific researcher and writer. Her books include De-Medicalizing Misery, The Bitterest Pills: The Troubling Story of Antipsychotic Drugs, and The Myth of the Chemical Cure.

Her latest book is titled Chemically Imbalanced: The Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth. This book in many ways is a follow-up to her 2022 paper which looked at the serotonin story and concluded that there was no good evidence that a serotonergic deficiency was a primary cause of depression. It caused quite a furor within the media and in psychiatry.

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A full transcript of this interview is availabe here: https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/04/chemically-imbalanced-joanna-moncrieff-making-unmaking-serotonin-myth/

Thank you for being with us to listen to the podcast and read our articles this year. MIA is funded entirely by reader donations. If you value MIA, please help us continue to survive and grow. https://www.madinamerica.com/donate/

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