395. Is depression just a chemical imbalance?
The Psychology of your 20s
iHeartPodcasts
4.8 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 15 March 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The idea that depression is caused by a “chemical imbalance” is one of the most widely accepted explanations in modern mental health ... but is it actually true?
In this bonus episode, we unpack where the chemical imbalance theory came from, how it became the dominant narrative around depression, and why many researchers today believe the story is far more complicated. Including:
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The academic and applied history of this theory
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What research says about antidepressants vs placebo
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Why the “low serotonin” explanation may be too simple
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The psychological and social drivers of depression
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Why meaning, connection, and environment matter for mental health
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Why depression treatment often works best when it’s multi-layered
Happy listening!
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello everybody, I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. |
| 0:24.1 | Hello, everybody. |
| 0:25.4 | Welcome back to the show. |
| 0:26.7 | Welcome back to the podcast. |
| 0:28.4 | It is so great to have you here back for another episode. |
| 0:31.8 | Today, I have a bonus episode for you guys. |
| 0:34.9 | And if you are new around here, let me tell you about our bonus |
| 0:38.3 | episodes. So our bonus episodes are our little shorter, sharper, more focused episodes that we do on |
| 0:46.8 | a singular term, a singular theory, a singular idea that you may have heard thrown around to do with psychology, to do with mental health, |
| 0:57.0 | something that gets a lot of traction, mainly online, but perhaps you never see properly discussed. |
| 1:04.0 | This is like my chance to just dive into the research for you guys and for myself. |
| 1:08.9 | And today we have a significant one. We are talking about |
| 1:13.3 | the theory that depression is just a chemical imbalance. Is that really true? Or is it a little bit |
| 1:22.0 | too simple? A lot of how we approach depression, think about depression, is based on this |
| 1:30.7 | biological model, but there are definitely parts of it that are no longer accurate and that we |
| 1:37.2 | know are no longer accurate as we kind of gain more medical understanding. So that is what we are going to talk about today. |
| 1:46.2 | A quick disclaimer, please do not take this as medical advice. |
| 1:51.3 | A lot of our discussion today does have implications for things like antidepressants. |
| 1:56.2 | I'm on antidepressants. |
| 1:57.8 | I literally just took mine like five minutes ago. |
| 2:00.8 | They help me. I will continue to stay on |
| 2:03.2 | them and I do believe they work. Um, you know, some articles that we're going to cite today |
... |
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