Dr Paul Allen

The pastor seemed uncertain. He might normally talk with the discouraged congregant about spiritual endurance or encourage him with a psalm, but today he was relatively silent. He was compassionate but offered no hopeful connections to Christ’s redeeming work or the Savior’s present help. Why? This pastor was concerned that any spiritual encouragement he gave might be misguided or unhelpful because the congregant had recently been diagnosed with depression. Most people believe depression is caused by a chemical imbalance, but this assumption has been challenged by a recent medical study titled “The Serotonin Theory of Depression.” The project, led by Dr. Joanna Moncrieff of the University College of London, was an umbrella review, a survey of the major psychiatric research on the link between depression and serotonin, the neurotransmitter psychiatrists have long cited as the most likely chemical cause of depression. After reexamining and collecting much of the relevant and reliable res