Are you an ‘ADHDer’? Have you ever suffered from clinical depression? Have you diagnosed yourself through an online quiz?

The third episode of Ditto Nation examines contemporary mental health culture by challenging the discourse and assumptions that many have taken for granted for decades. It looks at how algorithms, techno-capitalism, as well as pharmaceutical and insurance companies have conspired to shape the way we think about the mind and how it works, often against our best interests.

The episode features Joanna Moncrieff – Professor of Critical and Social Psychiatry at University College London – whose work has been foundational in showing that there is no proven link between depression and brain chemistry. It also features a health industry whistle-blower who exposes a deliberate effort to provide prescription medication to self-diagnosed ‘patients’. It asks how we arrived at a place in time where our diagnoses define us, questioning if this is the best or only way to think about our mental health and wellbeing.

SUPPORT:
https://www.patreon.com/ditto_nation

LINKS:

00:44 Moncrieff, Joanna. The Myth of the Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2008.

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-0-230-58944-5

03:02 Moncrieff, J. “Research on a ‘Drug-Centred’ Approach to Psychiatric Drug Treatment: Assessing the Impact of Mental and Behavioural Alterations Produced by Psychiatric Drugs”. Epidemiology and Psychiatric Sciences 27, no. 2 (April 2018): 133–40.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-psychiatric-sciences/article/research-on-a-drugcentred-approach-to-psychiatric-drug-treatment-assessing-the-impact-of-mental-and-behavioural-alterations-produced-by-psychiatric-drugs/45F9FAA613296EE119B331F5F884465C

06:19 Langley, Christelle, Sophia Armand, Qiang Luo, George Savulich, Tina Segerberg, Anna Søndergaard, Elisabeth B. Pedersen, et al. “Chronic Escitalopram in Healthy Volunteers Has Specific Effects on Reinforcement Sensitivity: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Semi-Randomised Study.” Neuropsychopharmacology 48, no. 4 (March 2023): 664–70.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41386-022-01523-x

35:15 The Economist. “Ketamine, Psilocybin and Ecstasy Are Coming to the Medicine Cabinet.” Accessed April 30, 2023.

https://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2022/09/21/ketamine-psilocybin-and-ecstasy-are-coming-to-the-medicine-cabinet

43:17 Hacking, Ian. “The Looping Effects of Human Kinds.” In Causal Cognition: A Multidisciplinary Debate, edited by D Sperber, D Premack, and A. J. Premack, 351–94. Symposia of the Fyssen Foundation. New York, NY, US: Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press, 1995.

https://books.google.com/books/about/Causal_Cognition.html?hl=it&id=nBra_k4nRXIC

48:14 See: MEL Magazine. “The Origin Story of the Zoloft Sad Blob, a Clinically Depressed Icon,” August 24, 2021. LINK
The A.V. Club. “Read This: The History of Zoloft’s ‘Sad Blob’ Commercial,”
August 27, 2021.

https://www.avclub.com/read-this-the-origins-of-the-sad-blob-from-those-ear-1847572614

51:00 Moncrieff, Joanna, Ruth E. Cooper, Tom Stockmann, Simone Amendola, Michael P. Hengartner, and Mark A. Horowitz. “The Serotonin Theory of Depression: A Systematic Umbrella Review of the Evidence.” Molecular Psychiatry, July 20, 2022, 1–14.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0

52:21 [The Economist, The Conversation]