General Article A world without antidepressants: the new alternatives to prescription pills

Topic Selected: Depression Book Volume: 404

Five years ago, Mark Dunning was at his lowest ebb. After years of switching from one antidepressant medication to another without success, his mental health was worse than ever. ‘I was suicidal,’ he remembers. ‘I’d been on various medications – sometimes they would work for a year or two and sometimes not at all. Those that did seem to work would abruptly stop with no warning at all and I literally couldn’t see myself being alive anymore. I just felt hopeless and disinterested in everything I’d ever enjoyed.’

His experience is far from unique. One in five adults in the UK has symptoms of anxiety or depression, with evidence that the pandemic has seen rates spike even further: 300 people a day are going to A&E departments because of feeling depressed, the NHS reported last week.

For many, the mainstay treatments offer limited benefit. According to the World Health Organization, around 30 per cent of people do not respond to existing treatments of antidepressant drugs, psychotherapy ...

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