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/
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