> Other clinicians say, however, that the notion of depression being because of a simple chemical imbalance is outmoded anyway, and that antidepressants remain a useful option for patients alongside other approaches including talking therapies.

This is the key line in the summary.

The concept of attacking an idea no one really believes is really a straw man.

More importantly the modern practice of medicine is "evidence based medicine", not "mechanism based medicine". That means treatments are tested as to if they work, not how they work. Ideally in multiple well run double blinded randomised controlled trials with at least some against treatment as usual. Unlike the past when we thought more about how they might work, theorising something is off about someone's humors and adjusting with leeches.

Anyone looking for a truly mind bending result should look at Hjorth et al. 2021 [0], the study recruited people with social phobia and gave them all an SSRI (escitalopram). Half were told they were getting a sham active placebo and "should not expect to get better", half were told "you're getting the known effective treatment".

Headline result being told you are being treated leads to 4x as much response with brain changes in the dopamin networks.

In the meanwhile, rather than worry about how antidepressants work, why not take a look at electroconvulsive therapy which has proven time and again to be the most effective treatment for depression. Yet we have no idea how it works, other than knowing a decent seizure in those without epilepsy makes you less sad? What on earth.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41398-021-01682-3