Antidepressants affect your sense of morality as well as your happiness

[Jazzy]

For those in doubt that our sense of morality is a physical thing as well as a philosophical one, this ought to change your mind.

A study has found that certain drugs, including commonly-prescribed antidepressants, actually change moral behaviour as well as influence mood.

Researchers from University College London gave 175 healthy adults the power to administer and receive electric shocks to see how much pain people were willing to inflict or put themselves through in exchange for money.

But that wasn’t all. Half the study group were given the antidepressant citalopram and the other half were given the Parkinson’s drug levodopa. These groups were compared against a placebo group.

Researchers found that those given citalopram were willing to pay almost twice as much to prevent harm to themselves or others when compared to a placebo group, while the group taking levodopa were the most likely to harm others for the cash reward.

‘Our findings have implications for potential lines of treatment for antisocial behavior, as they help us to understand how serotonin and dopamine affect people’s willingness to harm others for personal gain,’ Molly Crockett, lead author of the research, told the Guardian.

‘Patients [taking these drugs] are tracked in terms of how their symptoms improve, but not necessarily in terms of how their behavior changes.’

Source

Thoughts?

 

[DrLeftover]

I can summarize in seven words.

Psychiatric Drugs Kill, the patients, and others.