Q: Part of what you describe in your new book Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder is a fair amount of “biomythology” about the illness. What aspects in particular do you have in mind?

A: Biomythology links to biobabble, a term I coined in 1999 to correspond to the widely-used expression psychobabble. Biobabble refers to things like the supposed lowering of serotonin levels and the chemical imbalance that are said to lie at the heart of mood disorders, ADHD, and anxiety disorders. This is as mythical as the supposed alterations of libido that Freudian theory says are at the heart of psychodynamic disorders.

While libido and serotonin are real things, the way these terms were once used by psychoanalysts and by psychopharmacologists now—especially in the way they have seeped into popular culture—bears no relationship to any underlying serotonin level or measurable chemical imbalance or disorder of libido. What’s astonishing is how quickly these terms were taken up by popular culture, and how widely, with so many people now routinely referring their serotonin levels being out of whack when they are feeling wrong or unwell.

Structure of serotonin

In the case of bipolar disorder the biomyths center on ideas of mood stabilization. But there is no evidence that the drugs stabilize moods. In fact, it is not even clear that it makes sense to talk about a mood center in the brain. A further piece of mythology aimed at keeping people on the drugs is that these are supposedly neuroprotective—but there’s no evidence that this is the case and in fact these drugs can lead to brain damage.

via Psychology Today Blogs.