Mind Fixers by Anne Harrington

Author:Anne Harrington
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2019-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

This hypothesis, which has been designated the “catecholamine hypothesis of affective disorders,” proposes that some, if not all, depressions are associated with an absolute or relative deficiency of catecholamines, particularly norepinephrine, at functionally important . . . receptor sites in the brain. Elation conversely may be associated with an excess of such amines.53

Schildkraut’s article would become the most frequently cited paper ever published in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Two years later he collaborated with Seymour Kety on another article, published in Science, that refined the original hypothesis, arguing strongly for seeing norepinephrine—rather than serotonin—as the neurotransmitter that regulated mood states.54 The hypothesis linking low levels of catecholamine neurotransmitters (especially norepinephrine) to low moods would provide a theoretical focus to pharmacological research for the next quarter century.

Schildkraut always protested that he intended his “catecholamine hypothesis” to be no more than that: a hypothesis, a working theory, a tentative way of making sense of all the experimental literature to date. As discussion of the idea spread, though, it began to seem less like a hypothesis and more like a claim. And in the 1970s, the first discussions of depression as a “chemical imbalance” appeared in the popular literature. Publications from Cosmopolitan to the New York Times explained that depression was caused by deficits in essential brain chemicals, and that antidepressants could fix the problem.55 One 1977 newspaper headline from Stars and Stripes, written during the Thanksgiving season, summed up this new thinking in a particularly pithy way: “No thanks on the holiday? Check your chemicals.”56

The new proposed linkages between disordered mood and disordered biochemistry even made it into courtrooms. On November 27, 1978, San Francisco was shocked to learn of the murders of a California public official named Harvey Milk and his colleague, Mayor George Moscone. Milk’s assassination in particular became a lightning rod for outrage because he was the first openly gay person elected to public office in the country. Both men had been murdered by a disgruntled former police officer, firefighter, and colleague of theirs named Dan White. White had resigned from the board on which all three men sat, partly because he had clashed politically with Milk on various initiatives. He had then changed his mind because he had not been able to get a different career financially off the ground, and so asked Moscone for his job back.

Originally Moscone was inclined to reappoint him, but Milk lobbied heavily for him to hold his ground, and so he had changed his mind. In apparent response to this outcome, White armed himself with a gun and climbed into a window of a government building to evade the metal detectors. He requested and was given permission to see Moscone. They argued over his reappointment, and then White shot Moscone in cold blood. From there, White went directly to Milk’s office and shot him five times as well, including twice in the head, execution style.

At White’s trial, his lawyers suggested that he had not been wholly responsible for his actions because he was suffering from untreated depression.

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