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As an individual who has struggled with mental illness for 10 years, it is comforting to hear some truth about how these drugs were initially formulated and tested. More than 50 years after the first psychopharmaceuticals were introduced, psychiatrists and patients are still picking medications at random because there are no tests to determine which chemicals in the brain (serotonin, neuropenephrin, etc.) are not functioning properly. As a result, many individuals with real mental health issues stop taking medication. I applaud Mr. Wittenborn for sharing the information he has with the public - even if it may not be as complete as some may like - because I believe it gives those of us with mental illness understanding that there are a lot of unknowns in the field of psychiatry that persist to this day.

As a behavioral pharmacologist I was appalled by Mr. Wittenborn's apparent poor understanding of the Forced Swim Test, and how antidepressant-like effects of compounds that are observed in this test are incorporated in drug development. Compounds that are currently approved as antidepressants when administered to rats or mice that are swimming (note that rodents always swim they never drown) are known to make the animals more active. Therefore, the animals' normal swim pattern changes and they become more active, with a reduction in their time of immobility (which is significantly different than say that antidepressants do not let rats drown). The Forced Swim Test is one of the many different tests that can be used to initially characterize compounds with a potential antidepressant-like effect. The extensive literature and review articles available on translational pharmacology and how behavioral tests in animals inform drug development should be re-evaluated by Mr. Wittenborn.