The Tudor Dixon Podcast: Exposing the Truth About Antidepressants with Dr. Joanna Moncrieff

Summary

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The Tudor Dixon Podcast: Exposing the Truth About Antidepressants with Dr. Joanna Moncrieff

Host: Tudor Dixon
Guest: Dr. Joanna Moncrieff
Release Date: September 15, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this episode, host Tudor Dixon sits down with Dr. Joanna Moncrieff—psychiatrist, professor, and author of Chemically: The Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth—to critically examine the widespread use of antidepressants, the entrenched "serotonin imbalance" theory, and the often unspoken, long-term risks and side effects experienced by patients. The conversation aims to expose the misconceptions and the lack of solid scientific evidence behind these widely prescribed medications, spotlighting both the individual and societal consequences.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Debunking the Serotonin Imbalance Theory

(03:06–08:18)

• Main Idea: The long-standing belief that depression is caused by a "chemical imbalance," specifically a deficiency of serotonin, is not scientifically supported.
• Dr. Moncrieff explains that the "serotonin hypothesis" was heavily marketed by pharmaceutical companies in the 1980s and 90s, not established by robust scientific evidence.
  • Dr. Moncrieff: "We found that none of those areas of research showed consistent or compelling evidence that there was any sort of abnormality in the serotonin system in people with depression, let alone a causal abnormality consisting of a lack of serotonin." (04:48)
• The serotonin story was appealing because it offered a simple, medicalized answer to complex human distress.

2. Impact of Pharmaceutical Messaging and Overmedication

(06:54–10:00)

• Dixon and Moncrieff discuss how patients, trusting their doctors, accepted the chemical imbalance narrative, often unaware it was a marketing ploy.
• The messaging reframed depression as a biological defect needing medication, rather than a reaction to life events.
• Quote:
  • Tudor Dixon: "You feel like, the doctor tells me this, I trust the doctor. I have to go on this. There's these terrible side effects. Suddenly there's a broken trust, but no one will listen." (06:04)
  • Dr. Moncrieff: "By telling people, you've got this brain chemical imbalance, we've got a drug that puts it right without there being scientific evidence to back that up, we've been profoundly misleading people." (09:25)

3. Emotional Numbing & Loss of Human Experience

(10:00–14:35)

• Antidepressants commonly dampen emotional range—blunting both negative and positive emotions.
• This emotional suppression might offer short-term relief but comes at the cost of authentic human experience, harming relationships, growth, and long-term wellbeing.
• Dr. Moncrieff: "Antidepressants...dampen down or numb people's emotions and restrict people's emotional range...people feel less, less happy, less joyful, less excited by things in life." (10:32)

4. Concerns for Youth and Teenagers

(13:21–15:02)

• Both speakers raise alarms about prescribing antidepressants to teenagers, noting adolescence as a sensitive period for emotional development.
• Emotional blunting in teen years can stunt growth, preventing young people from learning coping skills.
• Dr. Moncrieff: "I'm worried that people are going into adult life in such a way that they might not be able to deal with emotional crises and things that, you know, are thrown at them in the future." (13:48)
• Long-term use starting young risks years of emotional suppression and difficulty withdrawing from the drugs.

5. Trends & Societal Shifts in Antidepressant Use

(19:01–22:55)

• Dixon observes that medication use among teens is now normalized—contrasting sharply with the 1990s when such prescriptions were rare.
• The rise of mental health openness has a double edge: while discussing problems is less stigmatized, it has also encouraged medication as a first-line solution.
• Labeling young adults as "biologically faulty" can create lifelong beliefs in their own inadequacy.
• Emergence of side effects such as sexual dysfunction—often persistent even after stopping the drugs—is discussed as a critical, under-acknowledged issue.
• Dr. Moncrieff: "Antidepressants cause sexual dysfunction...for some people, these sexual problems persist after they've stopped taking the antidepressant." (21:35)

6. Real Voices: Patient Stories & Lasting Harms

(22:55–31:07, 36:27–38:30)

• Dixon reads emotional testimonies from listeners and Dr. Moncrieff’s book, describing severe emotional flattening, diminished creativity, persistent sexual dysfunction, and loss of life’s pleasure.
  • Listener Quote (via Dixon): "This is basically like being dead while still breathing." (36:27)
  • Listener Quote: "We feel chemically castrated and lobotomized. ... No one should ever have to feel like this because of a medication handed out so frivolously for mild depression." (38:30)
• One case from the book: A woman lost all genital sensation soon after starting medication; discontinuation brought no relief, devastating her chance at relationships.
  • Dixon: "She never married, she never had a relationship because...she had no sexual desires. This is criminal. As far as I'm concerned, robbing someone of the human experience should [be] criminal." (27:32)

7. Prevalence and Dismissal of Side Effects

(28:28–31:07, 40:56–41:45)

• Recent data (e.g., a Canadian survey) shows possibly over 10% of people experience lasting sexual side effects post-antidepressants—far from rare.
• The taboo around discussing sexual dysfunction means many suffer in silence, amplifying distress and isolation.

8. Lack of Efficacy & Dangers of Withdrawal

(31:55–33:33, 32:29–33:33)

• Placebo-controlled trials reveal, at best, minimal difference between antidepressants and placebo.
• The belief that these drugs are uniquely effective is a second myth; hope and expectation may account for most observed gains.
• Withdrawal symptoms can be severe and persistent, with little scientific investigation into long-term impacts.
• Some evidence antidepressants can cause aggression or suicidality in susceptible patients.

9. Why Does the Myth Persist?

(40:02–41:16)

• Despite most antidepressants being off-patent (and less profitable to pharma), medical inertia and reluctance to admit a large-scale public health mistake keep the over-prescription and under-disclosure cycle going.
• Dr. Moncrieff: "I think the bigger reason that there is a reluctance to admit how useless and harmful they are is that they've just been so widely used. It's such a huge mistake... like the opioid crisis, that doctors really struggle to acknowledge that that is the situation." (40:02)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Debunking the Myth

• Dr. Moncrieff (04:48): "We found that none of those areas of research showed consistent or compelling evidence that there was any sort of abnormality in the serotonin system in people with depression."
• Dr. Moncrieff (09:25): "By telling people, you've got this brain chemical imbalance, we've got a drug that puts it right without there being scientific evidence to back that up, we've been profoundly misleading people."

On Emotional Numbing

• Dr. Moncrieff (10:32): "Antidepressants...dampen down or numb people's emotions and restrict people's emotional range."
• Dixon (27:32): "Robbing someone of the human experience should [be] criminal."

Real-Life Stories

• Listener quote (36:27): "This is basically like being dead while still breathing."
• Listener quote (38:30): "We feel chemically castrated and lobotomized."

On Prevalence of Side Effects

• Dr. Moncrieff (28:28): "A survey...found that 13% of people were reporting persistent sexual problems after stopping antidepressants... It could be that this is affecting 10% or more of people who are using antidepressants."

On Medical Inertia

• Dr. Moncrieff (40:02): "[Doctors] really struggle to acknowledge that that is the situation."

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:06–08:18 – Discussing the serotonin imbalance myth and its pharmaceutical origins
• 10:00–14:35 – Antidepressants’ emotional numbing and consequences for youth
• 19:01–22:55 – Shifts in societal attitudes toward mental health and medication
• 22:55–31:07 – The extent and seriousness of sexual side effects and real-life accounts
• 31:55–33:33 – Antidepressant efficacy, placebo effect, and withdrawal issues
• 36:27–38:30 – Personal testimonies and the weight of suffering
• 40:02–41:16 – Why the medical system won’t easily admit its mistake

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Conclusion & Call to Action

Tudor Dixon and Dr. Joanna Moncrieff assert that the prevailing attitudes toward antidepressant use are based on myths, misrepresentation, and inattention to real, lasting harm. The episode underscores the urgent need for open discussion, informed consent, honest medical communication, and a broad re-examination of how society addresses mental health challenges. Dr. Moncrieff’s book, Chemically: The Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth, is recommended for those seeking to understand more and advocate for change.

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Resources Mentioned

• Book: Chemically: The Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth by Dr. Joanna Moncrieff (Trafalgar Publishers, US release September 23)
• Dr. Moncrieff: Website and X (formerly Twitter) for ongoing discussion and updates.

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This episode is essential listening for anyone concerned about the widespread use of antidepressants, the veracity of medical narratives, and the long-term implications for generations to come.

Transcript

[Tudor Dixon]

This is an iHeart podcast.

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[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Check us [e-mail] America is changing and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, dc. I'm Tristan Redman in London and this is the Global Story. Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Tudor Dixon]

Welcome to the Tutor Dixon Podcast. Today we have a podcast that so many of you have been asking for. It actually would shock you to see the messages in my inbox from people who have been harmed by antidepressants and they've asked me to expose the truth. So many people that feel like they don't have a voice. And that's not to say that all antidepressants are bad, but it is to say that we need to allow people to hear the full spectrum of risks associated with the use of antidepressants before they get on them so they know what they're getting into. And it seems like that hasn't been happening for me. These issues are near and dear to my heart and I've been searching for a way to bring this to the light. And that actually led me to a wonderful doctor named Dr. Joanna Moncrieff. Dr. Moncrief wrote a book, Chemically the Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth, which I was like, okay, this is some. This is something we just don't talk about, we haven't heard about. So we have Dr. Moncrief here with us today. She's an expert on the subject. She's also a practicing psychiatrist for the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. She's also a professor. And I want to thank her for stepping into what seems to be kind of dangerous territory in your profession, sharing the truth about this. Thank you.

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Thank you for having me on Tudor. It's good to be able to spread the word.

[Tudor Dixon]

Absolutely. So I want to get into the book because you start the book by debunking this kind of long time myth. You say there's no evidence showing that depression is caused by an abnormality in the brain, chemical serotonin. Explain that.

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

So for a long time, there's been a theory kicking around that depression might be caused by a chemical imbalance such as a lack of serotonin. But although people didn't realize that it was just a theory because people had been led to believe this was an established scientific fact, it turns out that actually the evidence for it never looked as if it was very strong or very compelling. But there was nowhere where you could go until a few years ago when we published a paper where you could see all the Research on serotonin and depression together in one place. So a few years ago, I got a little team together and we identified all the recent research that's been done on serotonin and depression, looking at various different aspects of the serotonin system, like serotonin itself, serotonin metabolite, serotonin receptors, et cetera. And we found that none of those areas of research showed consistent or compelling evidence that there was any sort of abnormality in the serotonin system in people with depression, let alone a causal abnormality consisting of a lack of serotonin.

[Tudor Dixon]

This, to me, is shocking because we've had so many people say, you don't understand. I have a brain chemical disparity. You know, I have a true problem. And I think that hearing that, you know, missing a brain chemical is really a tangible problem. And that is a problem. A tangible problem seems to be something you can prove, and therefore a parent or a spouse or even the patient who says, my gosh, I have a deficiency in serotonin, I must jump on this medication bandwagon because that's going to fix the deficiency. That is an excuse to go out and say, I have to be on this medication. But it's not even an excuse. When you're in that position, you feel like, the doctor tells me this, I trust the doctor. I have to go on this. There's these terrible side effects. Suddenly there's a broken trust, but no one will listen.

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Yeah, no, absolutely. So this idea was promoted by the pharmaceutical industry when they were marketing the SSRI antidepressants back in the late 1980s and 1990s. And at this time, they very deliberately set out to persuade people that depression is something that's in the brain, is caused by brain chemicals, and to override people's previous instincts, that depression is a reaction to things that are going on in your life. And that campaign was enormously successful, partly because they threw an awful lot of money at it, partly because what they were putting across was, as you suggest, a sort of simple idea that people could latch onto. And that has some appeal when you're feeling really at your depths and you're really distressed. The idea that, oh, it's not me, it's not my life, it's just a simple problem in my brain. And, whoa, look at this. The doctor's got a solution for it. How handy. I can take this antidepressant and everything will be all right. So, you know, I think. I think it was this combination of all the money that went into promoting this idea with the fact that it was this nice, simple, appealing little story that people could observe, could accept to explain their difficulties.

[Tudor Dixon]

I think you're saying it correctly, though. It's this idea that you have a biological condition that a medication can solve and it will save your life. That's significant.

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Absolutely. I mean, it's an incredibly misleading story when we know that actually it's not supported by scientific evidence because it's, you know, it persuades people like you say that there's something, you know, that there's something wrong with your brain, therefore you need to take a drug to put it right. If you were told instead, which is actually the situation, we've got no idea what's going on in your brain. Your feelings are probably a reaction to things that are going on in your life, in your environment. We've got drugs that mess about with your brain chemicals in some way, but we don't understand quite how. Quite what they're doing, quite how they affect people. But we've done these trials that show they're a tiny little bit better than placebo. Although actually, if we did the trials properly, we might not see any difference. And they cause all these health problems, especially if you take them for a long period of time, then people would be a lot more cautious about, you know, about taking antidepressants than it would be, you know, a whole different. A whole different ball game. So, you know, by telling people, you've got this brain chemical imbalance, we've got a drug that puts it right without there being scientific evidence to back that up, We've been profoundly misleading people and stopping people from making properly informed decisions about whether to take these chemicals or not.

[Tudor Dixon]

It's not just that you're taking a chemical, it's. So many of these people have come out and said, my life has never been the same. I have never felt life again. Really. I've never had the human experience again. And yet for us to talk about this right now, it is controversial. And I say, how is this not a massive crisis that the health organizations are saying pharmaceutical companies need to step up and tell the truth about? But it's like everyone's in cahoots and people are suffering.

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Yeah, yeah. So this idea that antidepressants corrected an underlying chemical imbalance was helped to obscure the fact that antidepressants, like other drugs that work on the brain, change our normal brain chemistry and therefore change our normal mental states and normal mental activities, including our emotions, our thought processes, and sometimes our behavior in more or less subtle ways. Because antidepressants differ from each other and differ from other mind altering drugs. But the point is that they are drugs that do alter our normal brain chemistry, make us feel different. And one of the changes that they seem to affect most commonly is that they dampen down or numb people's emotions and restrict people's emotional range so that people, so as well as maybe feeling less distressed or less anxious, people feel less, less happy, less joyful, less excited by things in life. So as you say, antidepressants seem to have this property of restricting us emotionally. Some people might feel that that effect is useful for them, at least temporarily if they're going through a period of distress and, and feeling intense negative emotions. But it seems intuitive that certainly in the long term numbing people's emotions is not a good thing to do. It's not going to help people resolve the problems in their lives. It's not going to help people build, you know, good, solid and lasting relationships.

[Tudor Dixon]

I want to share, I have some of the statements here that people have shared with me and I want to get to that. But I want to talk a little bit about what you just said. These are experiences and sometimes you go through bouts of sadness or even depression, but they're part of the human experience. Like we're meant to believe that you're never supposed to feel sad, that you're never supposed to have periods of sadness. But there are times where life is a struggle. I mean Even as a 16 year old, I have a 16 year old and a 14 year old going through high school, there are times when they feel sad, they feel out of place. We, we talk through that. They aren't looking for, they don't want to feel nothing. But I think that they're miss. These kids are also misled and parents are misled. When a child is going through a dark time will make it so they feel nothing and they'll come through the other side. But it's not always easy to get off of these either. Once you do put somebody on these medications.

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

No, it's not. And I think the idea of putting teenagers on them particularly is, you know, is really worrying because of course, you know, you're. Teenage years are a period when you feel things very intensely. And so, you know, you can, you can understand how teenagers, parents might be, you know, looking for a way to numb themselves.

[Tudor Dixon]

But I think if parenting teenagers is hard.

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Yes, exactly. But if people don't go through this period and learn that first of all they come out the other side, you know, things get less intense, just naturally but also they learn how to manage those feelings. And if they don't learn those lessons because they're numbed, you know, I'm worried that people are going into adult life in such a way that they might not be able to deal with emotional crises and things that, you know, are thrown at them in the future.

[Tudor Dixon]

You had some stories in the book about people who said that. They said I was put on antidepressants and when I was in my teenage years, and it was almost as though I missed that emotional growth. And I'm not prepared for what I have in my adult life because I just have missing years.

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Yeah, yeah. And, and, and you also mentioned how, you know, get people can get onto these drugs and be on them for, you know, years at a time and then have great difficulty coming off them. So, you know, particularly if we're starting people on them young, you know, we're potentially going to end up with a, with a whole load of adults who are stuck on these tablets having real difficulty getting off them and have been, you know, emotionally suppressed for years.

[Tudor Dixon]

We'll be right back with more of my conversation with Dr. Joanna Moncrief. But first, I want to bring you a message from my partners at IFCJ. It was nearly two years ago that terrorists murdered more than 1200 innocent Israelis and took 250 hostages. Today, it almost seems like the cries of the dead and the dying have been drowned out by anti Semitic hatred. I know you've heard it in the United States. We've heard it all over the world. And now the most brutal attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust has been forgotten. Yet as the world looks away, there's a light that shines in the darkness. It's a movement of love and support for the people of Israel called Flags of Fellowship, and it's organized by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. On October 5, just a few weeks away, millions across America will prayerfully plant an Israeli flag in honor and solidarity with the victims of October 2023 and their grieving families. And now you can be a part of this movement, too. To get more information about how you can join the Flags of Fellowship movement, visit the fellowship [e-mail] that's ifcj.org Stay tuned. We've got more right after this.

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[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Check us [e-mail] America is changing and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, DC. I'm Tristan Redman in London and this is the Global Story. Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Tudor Dixon]

So it's interesting I was talking to my kids about this last night because they they say almost they feel like many, probably more Than half of the kids in their school are on some type of medication. Whether that's true or not, it seems like that's the case. And you talked about the advertisements in the 90s and the early 2000s that made it like, hey, this is what we should all be on. This is very normal. And I do think that people are more willing to talk about it. When I was, I was telling them when I was in high school, I don't remember anybody being on medication. That was like the beginning of Prozac and the beginning of antidepressants, but it really wasn't something that people were regularly talking about. And I feel like, I know that you have a nostalgia from when you're young, but it seemed like people's interpersonal relationships were much healthier. I graduated in 1995 from high school and after that we started to see this skyrocket in antidepressants and actually aggression in teenagers as well.

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we live in a culture where everyone is much more open about mental health problems. And I think that, you know, has positive and negative sides to it. You know, I don't think it's good if people are bottling up problems and suffering alone. And it's good if people feel they can share, you know, how they're feeling emotionally and share their difficulties with people. On the other hand, I'm afraid that that leads to this tendency to diagnose and label people as having mental disorders that need, you know, that need drugs to put them right. And clearly that's how it has progressed, you know, because we've just been, you know, using more and more of these drugs, labeling more and more young people. And not only does that mean they might end up on these emotion suppressing drugs for years, it also means they grow up with this idea that they're faulty in some way, that they've got, you know, that they've got a biological fault and that there's nothing that they can do about it. That, you know, that they're always going to, you know, they're always going to struggle.

[Tudor Dixon]

That's an interesting statement because I think when you are in high school, when you're going through puberty, you feel like you're broken in all kinds of ways. I'm not good enough. I'm not pretty enough. I have acne. I'm not, I'm not as developed, you know, I'm shorter. All of these different things that you go through in your mind because you don't know what you are as a final product and you're wondering and you're anxious about it, and that's normal. But if you stop that emotional growth at that point, do you ever get out of thinking there's something wrong with me?

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it's that intense time, isn't it, high school when you're, you're, you're with so many people of your own age group. So you're constantly comparing yourself. And as I said, I think, you know, what antidepressants are doing is suppressing your emotions so that you're not necessarily then able to learn that actually you can manage to get a grip on them and they do get less intense and you do get through these difficult periods in life. We should also maybe mention maybe you're coming onto it, but that, you know, alongside the emotional blunting, they cause sexual dysfunction. Very well recognized that they caught that, you know, that antidepressants cause sexual dysfunction while people are taking them. But what's becoming more and more apparent over recent years is that for some people, these sexual problems persist after they've stopped taking the antidepressant. And this seems to me to be a huge issue. And I should say as well that this has been shown in animal studies. So it's not just that people who've taken antidepressants are depressed and that's why they're not having a great sex life. It has been shown in animal studies. It looks like it's a biological effect.

[Tudor Dixon]

That is that, that's the number one question I got from people. And that was, I think that was the part that surprised me the most, was that people, as soon as we put out, we're going to be talking about this stuff on a podcast this week. The number of people who came out and openly on X, on a, on a here on a public platform came out and said, please talk about what this is doing to people. And you talk about the experience of being on these. So I just want to read a little portion from your book. You say they reported their ability to experience positive emotions such as joy, excitement, enthusiasm and happiness was diminished, as well as the intensity of negative feelings such as sadness, anger, irritability and anxiety. They felt less love or affection for their family members and friends and their interest in life had been diminished. That doesn't even. And we're not even getting to the sexual side effects yet. We're looking at, suddenly you have a family member who you think, and trust me, we've been there in our family. You think you put somebody on this medication, it's going to help them calm down, it's going to help them have a better life. And suddenly you lose that person. I mean, you really lose them. Because when you say in your book they felt less love or affection for family members and friends and their interest in life diminished, what do you think that does to their children, to their parents, to their spouse?

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Yeah, yeah. I've been hearing more and more comments from family members along these lines, talking about the changes that these drugs can cause in people and the emotional distance that they can create in relationships when someone is taking one of these drugs.

[Tudor Dixon]

It's like a victimhood. And that's the thing that makes me mad about these, that the health organizations won't come out and say, we've got many victims. We've got victims who have taken the medication and we have victims who are in the family who have lost somebody who is taking the medications. And victim may sound like a strong word, but this seems like a national health emergency to me, and we're not talking about it. And now I do want to say talk about spousal relationships and even relationships for young people, people trying to have a relationship. These antidepressants, when you talk about reduced sexual desire, we are talking about so much more than what people can imagine. You've got reduced sexual desire, decreased sexual excitement, delay in reducing the intensity of an orgasm, and erectile dysfunction problems, delayed ejaculation. I mean, these are hard things to talk about, but I have so many people telling me this is what they're experienc. And the crazy thing to me, in your book, you say that these are actually prescribed to sex offenders to reduce their sex drive. How if you are depressed and you say, boy, life is really hard, how is like, hey, let me give you something that'll make you never want to have sex again, or you will want to have sex and you won't be able to. How does that help people that are depressed?

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

I know, I know. It's really shocking, isn't it? Genital numbing is the most characteristic effect of SSRIs and similar antidepressants. And. And then of course, that leads to all sorts of problems like difficulty having orgasm and erectile dysfunction and things. And yeah, I mean, you know, really shocking. When you talk about victims, I don't think it's too strong a word because people who have significant problems with their sexual function or the people who are really struggling with prolonged withdrawal states, many of them are in a terrible state. You know, their lives have been absolutely turned upside down. You know, people who are in these withdrawal states. Many of them can't go to work anymore. They, you know, they lose their relationships because they're so unwell. Some of them are, you know, can't even get out of bed for weeks or months at a time. So it can be really serious. And of course, the people who have this, you know, persistent sexual dysfunction, you know, many of them are young people just at the start of their, you know, relationship life, and suddenly things are not working properly. They've lost their desire, they've lost their interest, and yet they know that they should have it. So, of course, this is absolutely tragic for these people and for the people around them.

[Tudor Dixon]

As you said, you write about a woman in the book who says that as soon as she took it, within days of taking the antidepressant, she could no longer. She had no longer any feeling in her genitals. She had no longer any feel. And she thought, well, as soon as I get into a relationship, I'll go off of this. It'll go away. She did. She found a relationship. She went off of the medication and she said, no desire for sex. No feeling. No feeling. No feeling whatsoever down there. I just cannot get past that. And she never married, she never had a relationship because that. Eventually that broke down because the person couldn't handle the fact that she had no sexual desires. This is criminal. As far as I'm concerned, robbing someone of the human experience should criminal. How can this continue? How is it these people aren't told? Just so you know, you'll go on this and you may feel less anxiety, but you might never feel anything else.

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

I know. I mean, people really, at least people really, really need to know about these. These complications, this possibility. And the other thing is, I would have said to you if I'd come on a couple of months ago, a few months ago, oh, I think this is pretty rare. You know, not minusculely rare because there are so many people talking about it, but pretty rare. But actually, there have been studies coming out recently that suggest it's possibly not that rare at all. There was a survey done in Canada, I believe, which found that 13% of people were reporting persistent sexual problems after stopping antidepressants. And that compared to only 1% of people who had stopped other medication. And it wasn't a study that was specifically about this. So it wasn't as if all the people answering the questionnaire were people who had an axe to grind. It was a general survey about sexual functioning. So it could be that this is affecting 10% or even more of people who are using antidepressants, which obviously mean it's huge numbers of people.

[Tudor Dixon]

It's huge numbers of people. And that's why I think we've had so many people reach out to us. And I think it is, I would say this is a very taboo subject. It's hard to talk about. And I understand why it hasn't been talked about for years because not many people want to come out and admit this. I mean, this. The woman that you talk about in the book, she said, when she did a documentary on it, she said, I expected you 15 years ago. I've been waiting for 15 years to tell this story. But that was still like seven years after it happened to her. And I think it's because it's so hard to come out and say, I can't do this anymore. Because having a physical relationship with your spouse, with your loved one, having sex is so important. It's so crucial to who we are. And nobody wants to say this, but you write in the book that one expert actually suggests that reduced genital sensation can occur within 30 minutes of taking the first dose. 30 minutes. And delayed and weakened orgasm can occur soon after. He actually described an example of a woman who took an ssri. Her genitals were so numb that she could brush them with a hairbrush without feeling a thing. That's sickening to me. It's terror. It's criminal. I cannot say enough. The idea that people have to live with this the rest of their life. How can this be? How can we be ignoring this?

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

So scary. I think we've just been much too blase about the idea of giving people mind altering drugs. And as I said at the beginning, that's partly because we've had this complete myth that what we're doing is using these sophisticated targeted substances when we're not. So we've been much too blase about it. We haven't properly investigated the consequences of taking these drugs. We haven't looked in detail at what happens when people come off them, at the sort of withdrawal problems that people have, the problems people have if they end up taking them for months or years. Most of the studies are set up to last a few months. And that's what we have the data on. And there's not very good data after that.

[Tudor Dixon]

In the US alone, it's an $18 billion industry annually. Antidepressants, putting people on drugs that aren't making you less depressed. And I say that I can see the reason you would put it. Put someone like the guy in North Carolina on these. However, there's also evidence that this can make people aggressive, that this can make people suicidal, that this can actually lead potentially to someone hurting other people. So how is there not a group of people out there saying, really, stop this, stop this medication?

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

There's another myth around that these drugs work, that they make people less depressed regardless of how, of how they, of how they might do that. And that's based on these placebo controlled studies. But actually these studies show that antidepressants are minimally different from a placebo, that the majority of the effect they're having is a placebo effect, which makes sense, doesn't it? Of course, you know, people go and see their doctor at their low point point they're given something that they think and hope is going to make them feel better. And of course that sends them off feeling a bit more hopeful, at least temporarily. So it's probably the case that these drugs have no actual beneficial pharmacological effect. And yet we know that if you tamper with brain chemistry, that can have negative consequences. And it's becoming more and more apparent that there are many negative consequences from taking antidepressants, including say for some people, this, this, this causing of aggressive or suicidal impulses.

[Tudor Dixon]

Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tudor Dixon Podcast.

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[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Learn more at tbo.com America is changing and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.

[Tudor Dixon]

I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Tristan Redman in London and this is the Global Story. Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Tudor Dixon]

This is so I really encourage everybody out there to get this book, to read this book because when you learn about this, you will learn about there's everybody knows somebody in their life that is on one of these medications. I just am at the point where I believe everybody knows someone or they're being pushed to go on it. And I say that because I do want to read a few of the comments that came to me and I'm reading them out loud because they were on a public forum and I think that that's okay to share. Someone says to me, please consider talking about the other horrifying symptoms of PSSD from ssri. Sexual dysfunction is only the tip of the iceberg for a lot of us. Lack of emotions, cognitive decline, destruction of our creativity and imaginations, muscle loss and heart conditions. Another one I'm a healthy man in my early 30s. All blood work tests are great, full body MRI, CAT scans normal. And yet I have no libido, full sexual dysfunction, emotions dulled, taste dulled, etc. This is two years after stopping Lexapro. PSSD is literally a crime against humanity. Two more I'm an anesthesiologist or one more. I'm an anesthesiologist in Michigan. I've been suffering from this for four years. I've met many other patients. This is basically like being dead while still breathing. Please help us raise awareness for prevention and a possible treatment. Our children are at risk. It breaks my heart to read these things because this guy is saying, what if someone gets to my kids and puts them. Because he has three children. What if someone puts my children on this medication? I mean, he's on it. He's living it. That, to me is, it's a crisis and no one's talking about it.

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

I know, I know. It's absolutely tragic. It just. I suppose it shows you the power of the, you know, the pharmaceutical industry, the medical profession, the medical industrial complex, we could call it, to, you know, to jute people, essentially.

[Tudor Dixon]

Actually, I do have one more that I think you need to hear. We feel chemically castrated and lobotomized. I would 100% rather only have sexual dysfunction at this point. It is a horrifying existence living like this 24. 7. No one should ever have to feel like this because of a medication handed out so frivolously for mild depression.

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Yeah, yeah. Puts it very well. Doesn't mean.

[Tudor Dixon]

I just. I thank you so much for being one who's willing to come forward and talk about this, because I think that we're at a time, at least in the United States, where we have a Health and Human Services agency that is open to talking about things like this. But for the. I have to say there has to be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people across the globe, or at least in the Western world, that have either experienced this themselves or they are also victims on the other side, as someone standing alongside a person who has been victimized by a doctor who doesn't tell them. And the reason I say this is because they're not learning, the doctors aren't telling them. And I'll just end asking you, is it because the doctors don't know? Is there a financial incentive to continue to dole out these drugs? What is the reason we can't tell people that their life will be permanently altered if they take these medications?

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

So most antidepressants are off patent now. So the pharmaceutical industry are no longer advertising, no longer care about them that much. I think the bigger reason that there is a reluctance to admit how useless and harmful they are is that they've just been so widely used. It's such a huge mistake that, like the opioid crisis, like the opioid crisis that doctors really struggle to acknowledge that that is the situation.

[Tudor Dixon]

It's a crisis. So your book, your book, tell us about your book. It's chemically the making and unmaking of the serotonin myth. This is what created the whole push to get people on. You have a chemical imbalance in your brain. You are dysfunctional. This will make you functional. Where can people get the the truth?

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

So it's published by Trafalgar publishers in the US on 23rd September. It's already out in the UK, so you can order it via the UK publisher and you can also get the electronic copy. But it will be out in the US officially on the 23rd. I have a website and I'm on X as well if people want to follow me there.

[Tudor Dixon]

It's so crucial. I mean, we, as you said, we had Dr. Jurato on, he talked about the fact that even the mother can transfer this to the baby when she is pregnant. And in adolescent animals that have received this when they were fetuses, they show the same sexual dysfunction when they hit adolescence. This could be a crisis for decades to come and it has to stop now. So thank you so much. Dr. Joanna Moncrief. Thank you for being here today.

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Thank you so much, Judith.

[Tudor Dixon]

Absolutely. And thank you all for joining us on the Tudor Dixon podcast. Make sure you head over to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You can watch it on Rumble or YouTube uterdixon and join us the next time. Have a blessed day.

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[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Check us [e-mail] America is changing, and so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.

[Tudor Dixon]

I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.

[Dr. Joanna Moncrieff]

Tristan Redman in London, and this is the Global story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

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