Mental Illness is NOT Caused by a Chemical Imbalance in Your Brain

You heard me right: this theory is actually a myth!

If you believed the chemical imbalance theory, don't feel foolish; this is an incredibly common misconception. I mean, doesn't it just sound so logical? When you have a general understanding of biology and you hear talk about "happy chemicals" in the brain, it's easy to believe. Too bad things aren't quite that simple.

The truth is that no chemical imbalance has been proven to exist in relation to any kind of mental health disorder. Additionally, there is also no way to test for the presence or absence of a chemical imbalance; no blood test, no urine sample, no brain scan... nada. Researchers have been working for the past 40 years to find any sliver of supporting evidence for this theory - literally thousands of studies - and haven't found anything. And even if we did know what a chemical imbalance looks like, the likelihood that "mood" is controlled by one specific neurotransmitter is slim. Like, Mariah-Carey-skinny-legend kind of slim.

WHAT ABOUT BRAIN SCANS?

Despite these facts, there remains a lot of misleading information surrounding the link between mental illness and brain chemicals. One example is studies that compare the brain scans of "normal" and "mentally ill" patients. It seems scientific and the colorful scans look cool, but they basically tell us nothing. All mental states have neurochemical substrates, and the brain is so sensitive to stimuli that even little things like music or certain thoughts can drastically change brain activity. So it isn't exactly groundbreaking to see different levels and places of brain activity because it happens all the time. The shifts are way too common to prove anything.

So don't blame your poor little serotonin molecules when you feel sad, 'cuz it isn't their fault!

REFERENCES

Myth of Chemical Imbalance

Debunking the Two Chemical Imbalance Myths, Again

There Are No "Chemical Imbalances"

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