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The Case for Antidepressants

Antidepressants are NOT Placebos   Hey team, I recently revisited Peter Kramer’s book "Ordinarily Well," in which he makes a compelling argument that antidepressants are significantly more than mere placebos, they indeed have tangible effects that can alter the course of depression for the better. This case arises amidst significant pushback against antidepressants, particularly the claim that they're nothing more than "placebos with side effects," a position I once explored but no longer find convincing. While antidepressants aren't correcting a "chemical imbalance"—a concept I've previously gone over—they undeniably have tangible effects on mental processes. Notably, antidepressants influence unconscious mechanisms related to emotional processing in ways that placebos simply don't replicate. This is in addition to unique effects on personality again not seen with placebos. Additionally, standard clinical trials are rife with limitations t...
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Personality: what is it and why it's important!

Hey team, Today, I’d like to discuss personality, specifically the aspects we can measure. While personality is complex, we have identified domains that provide meaningful insights into how people think, feel, and behave. Back in January I read Daniel Nettle’s “Personality, What Makes You The Way You Are”  and it did a great job of outlining our current understanding of personality with lots of poignant examples. Nettle explains that personality traits are not absolute descriptors of behavior but rather tendencies that manifest across many circumstances, though not necessarily every single one. Obviously, we can’t predict behavior 100% of the time, but these tendencies offer a useful framework for understanding individual differences.  Despite this variability, personality traits demonstrate a high degree of reliability over time, meaning that individuals tend to maintain their relative standing on these traits across years or even decades. For example, across 12 years persona...
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Framing: What You Emphasize is What They Hear

  Framing is the phenomenon where our perception of a choice changes depending on how the information is presented, even when the underlying facts are the same. Imagine a new drug for hypertension. In clinical trials, it lowered blood pressure to a healthy level in 90% of patients. We could say: "This drug is 90% effective!" and it would be seen as a triumph. But we could just as accurately say: "It fails to work in 1 out of every 10 patients." Suddenly, that same drug seems a little less impressive. Nothing about the data changed—only the story around it. This effect extends well beyond numbers. Take side effects: we could frame them as "most people experience none," or as "a significant minority do." Both are technically true. But the emotional and clinical weight those statements carry i...
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