It's still a complete mischaracterization. What RW is saying, to vastly simplify, is that pharma companies and psychiatrists are selling drugs that haven't been proven to work by using the monoamine hypothesis, which is a largely discredited theory.
What this blog is saying is that when psychiatrists talk about a chemical imbalance, they are merely saying that brain chemicals are involved in depression in some way, rather than that a lack of serotonin causes depression. The latter has literally nothing to do with what Robert Whitaker is actually talking about. It's just nonsense pharma propaganda designed to trick people who haven't actually read the original book, which sadly is the vast majority of people.
How can it be a mischaracterization? RW explicitly argued against the blog post in question here: http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/04/psychiatrists-still-prom... If he was being mischaracterized, wouldn't he have said that instead of repeating exactly what he was claimed to be saying?
> pharma companies and psychiatrists are selling drugs that haven't been proven to work by using the monoamine hypothesis
Where's your evidence here? SSRIs do work (I assume this is the class of drug we're talking about). For sure, they don't work for some people (or some types of depression; hard to say which is the issue at this point). But they still beat placebo on average.
In fact, the monoamine hypothesis was _based_ on the fact that SSRIs work. The cause/effect is the opposite of what it would have to be for your claim to make sense.
