The Inflamed Brain: Unravelling the connection between inflammation and depression
7 April 2025 It’s a truism among medical researchers that it takes an average of 17 years for evidence gathered through that research to change clinical practice. And what that means, is that practitioners who are adhering to the norms and guidelines of their professions continue to deploy useless, inferior or counterproductive investigations and treatments…
On the pursuit of happiness
17 March 2025 Recently, I came across a paper that reported the findings of several studies that concluded that people who obsess over their own level of happiness end up more depressed, more negative, and less satisfied with their lives than people who are more or less unconcerned by how happy they are. On the…
Cholesterol and depression: What’s bad for the heart is bad for the brain
16 December 2024 N.B. I hate those stupid trigger warnings that encourage grown adults to believe that they’ll be permanently psychologically harmed by reading about upsetting topics. But yeah, this post discusses suicide – a lot – so if you find that triggering, consider yourself warned. Anyhow… In the last post, I laid out the…
Stop talking about your ‘mental health’
It’s making you – and everyone else – crazy 5 August 2024 I published last week’s post, The depression misconception, with some trepidation. In a society that has been steeped in the narrative of ‘depression-as-mental-illness’, labelling depression as ‘failure feedback’, and raising the possibility that it is actually a functional, adaptive response to significant failure,…
The depression misconception
29 July 2024 One of the best things about publishing my articles on Substack is the Comments section! I’ve been fortunate to attract some highly intelligent subscribers, who post thought-provoking comments in response to my articles. The following comment was left by one such subscriber, and as you’ll see, it was so on-point that I…
5 reasons to think twice before taking an antidepressant
One in 10 Australian adults is taking an antidepressant, but a growing number of scientists are asserting that these blockbuster drugs do more harm than good.
Is ‘mental illness’ in the mind, or the body… or both?
8 January 2024 In last week’s post, Worried sick, I briefly mentioned a study which examined markers of both brain and body health in people diagnosed with any of four neuropsychiatric conditions, and found that they had greater deviations from healthy controls in markers of body health – most notably in their metabolic, hepatic, and…
Antidepressant discontinuation syndrome: An underrecognised and rapidly escalating problem
4 December 2023 As I’ve discussed in previous articles, antidepressants are now the most commonly prescribed class of drugs in Australia, with ten per cent of adult Australians currently taking some form of antidepressant. Despite their lack of efficacy when compared to placebo and their laundry list of serious side effects (from sexual dysfunction to…
The Universe Within – Part 2: Make Friends With Your Gut Microbiome
Well-fed gut bugs equals a happy, healthy you. But what should we eat in order to feed our microscopic allies?
More proof that the oral contraceptive pill causes depression
A UK study has found that taking the oral contraceptive pill doubles the risk of experiencing symptoms of depression, during the first two years of use.