Do Low Serotonin Levels Really Cause Depression?

The medical community have felt for a long while that low serotonin levels in the brain lead to depression — but there are several problems with that belief — and new research suggests neurogenesis holds a truer key to cure.

If it takes up to a month for medicine to increase serotonin levels in the brain, there should still be a recordable difference in mind and mood as serotonin levels increase over.  That was not the case.

Increasing serotonin levels only helped 60% of patients.  If low serotonin levels were the cause of depression, everyone on medication should have seen some beneficial, measurable, outcome.  That was not the case.

If we reverse the theory — by lowering serotonin levels in non-depressed people — we should see an overall increase in depression.  That did not happen.

Anti-depressants increase neurogenesis by creating more cells and by making new neurons in the brain and, more specifically, the hippocampus.

Research is now focusing on increasing neurogenesis — without the side effect current depressive medication creates by increasing neurons — and the promise of this new attack on depression is that we can finally, perhaps, genetically, and permanently, transform the depressive mind into an average one.