ABSTRACT
In the hope of bolstering a “broken brain” theory of depression, and of justifying the use of antidepressants in combating this alleged brain disease, biological psychiatry has proposed an analogy between depression and diabetes. In Type 1 diabetes, the physiological defect has been shown to be a deficiency of insulin caused by autoimmune destruction of the islet β-cells in the pancreas. This deficit is managed, though not permanently overcome, when externally administered insulin lowers high blood glucose, decreasing the insult to the vascular system responsible for the systemic effects of this disease. With diabetes, a physiological disorder of known etiology is targeted with a drug that blunts its deleterious effects.
