Malignant Sadness

Author: Lewis Wolpert
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 0571266711
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 302

Book Description
'An excellent book, the most objective short account I know of all the various approaches to depression.' Anthony Storr Several years ago, Lewis Wolpert had a severe episode of depression. Despite a happy marriage and successful scientific career, he could think only of suicide. When he did recover, he became aware of the stigma attached to depression - and just how difficult it was to get reliable information. With characteristic candour and determination he set about writing this book, an acclaimed investigation into the causes and treatments of depression, which formed the basis for a BBC TV series. This paperback edition features a new introduction, in which Wolpert discusses the reaction to his book and BBC series, and recounts his own recurring struggle with depression.

Understanding Depression

Author: Carmine Pariante
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199533075
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 404

Book Description
Depression is a major cause of morbidity and a significant public health problem. This book brings together world leaders in research on depression to discuss both classical and innovative ideas for understanding this devastating disorder. It includes cutting edge research from neurobiology, psychology, genetics, and evolutionary biology.

Cultural Pessimism

Author: Bennett Oliver Bennett
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474464343
Category : LITERARY CRITICISM
Languages : en
Pages : 224

Book Description
Cultural pessimism arises with the conviction that the culture of a nation, a civilisation or of humanity itself is in a process of irreversible decline. In an incisive and wide-ranging analysis, Cultural Pessimism: Narratives of Decline in the Postmodern World charts the growth of pessimism in the West during the last decades of the twentieth century. Drawing on studies from within a very broad range of fields, which include ecology, human rights, military history, international relations, criminology, history of science, cultural criticism and political economy, the author shows how cultural pessimism in the postmodern world can be related to the cumulative effect of four key narratives of decline:*Environmental decline*Moral decline*Intellectual decline*Political declineAfter a review of pessimism in other historical periods, each of these narratives is explored in depth. The book attempts to answer a number of questions: how are the narratives constituted and what are the conditions to which they refer? To what extent are those conditions historically unprecedented? To which cultures do the narratives relate? What values do they reflect? To what extent are the identified processes of decline seen as irreversible? Concluding that cultural pessimism is as much a matter of psychological and biological disposition as of intellectual judgement, Oliver Bennett's challenging book offers valuable new insights into how we view the prospects of the twenty-first century.Features:*Provides an authoritative account of how the postmodern world has been represented as one of decline. *Brings together different perspectives kept apart by professional and academic specialisation*Views culture in its broadest sense as 'a whole way of life'*Provides an historical overview of cultural pessimism, tracing its various manifestations from the modern period back to its existence in early religions*Examines the biological, psychological and sociolog

Surviving Manic Depression

Author: Edwin Fuller Torrey
Publisher: Basic Books (AZ)
ISBN: 9780465086634
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Book Description
A groundbreaking guide to manic depression, which affects more than two million people in the U.S. alone, is drawn from the most recent research, furnishing in-depth coverage on every aspect of the ailment, from symptoms, psychotherapy, and rehabilitation to special problems arising out of this disorder, such as violent behavior, suicide, sex, AIDS, and alcohol and drug abuse.

Black Dogs and Blue Words

Author: Kimberly Emmons
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813547202
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 228

Book Description
Analyzes the rhetoric surrounding depression. Maintains that the techniques and language of depression marketing strategies, vague words such as worry, irritability, and loss of interest, target women and young girls and encourage self-diagnosis and self-medication. Further, depression narratives and other texts encode a series of gendered messages about health and illness. As depression and other forms of mental illness move from the medical-professional sphere into that of the consumer-public, the boundary at which distress becomes disease grows ever more encompassing, the need for remediation and treatment increasingly warranted. From publisher description.

How Sadness Survived

Author: Paul Keedwell
Publisher: Radcliffe Publishing
ISBN: 1846190134
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 194

Book Description
Drawing on evolutionary psychology to argue that depression has a useful function, this book offers insight into the true nature of depression, its causes, consequences and possible benefits. It is fully referenced, with definitions for technical terms, and tables, illustrations and diagrams to aid comprehension.

Treatment-Resistant Depression

Author: Siegfried Kasper
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118556739
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Book Description
Treatment-resistant Depress Successful management of patients with treatment-resistant depression requires a thorough understanding of the biological basis for both the depression and its failure to respond to standard treatments. This book clearly and succinctly summarizes the latest scientific research and its applications in clinical practice. A first step is a clear definition of what constitutes treatment-resistant depression so that clinical trials and other studies are using common criteria, enabling comparison and meta-analysis of their outcomes. The opening chapter reviews definitions and predictors of treatment-resistant depression originating from different fields and discusses their usefulness in clinical practice and clinical research. The next chapter proposes a new definition, adapting terminology from medicine. Biological classification requires identification of genetic risk factors and gene variants have been identified as accounting for 50% of the variance in the clinical outcomes of antidepressant treatments. Chapter 3 describes several genes already associated with treatment-resistant depression and, while further work is needed to translate findings into clinical recommendations, suggests that genetic prediction of treatment resistance could become a widespread clinical reality within a few years. Most patients with treatment-resistant depression will be treated pharmacologically, so three chapters review the latest evidence for pharmacological best practice in switching strategies for antidepressants, the role of antipsychotics and augmentation strategies to complement lithium. There are two major alternatives to pharmacotherapy: neuromodulation and psychotherapy. The brain intervention chapter summarizes clinical research and experience with electroconvulsive therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation, vagus nerve stimulation, deep brain stimulation and magnetic seizure therapy. The final chapter reviews the literature pertaining to the effectiveness of various forms of psychotherapy in patients who have not responded to antidepressant pharmacotherapy, explaining that patients who have not responded to one or two trials of antidepressant medication have a 30%-50% chance of responding to a focused psychotherapy. It proposes indications for psychotherapy in treatment-resistant depression and summarizes general therapeutic principles. Essential reading for all psychiatrists managing patients with this distressing disorder.

The Natural Medicine Guide to Depression

Author: Stephanie Marohn
Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing
ISBN: 1612830374
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Book Description
Make Depression a Thing of the Past Depression is startlingly widespread in the U.S., with some 30 million people-nearly one out of ten people-taking Prozac to alleviate symptoms. One in four women will have clinical depression in their lifetime, as will one in eight adolescents or men. Yet even with so many on antidepressants, depression remains rampant and nobody is getting truly healed. Why? The answer is that the true causes of depression are not being treated, explains medical journalist Stephanie Marohn. Drawing on the successful clinical results of 11 practitioners from different fields of natural medicine she shows convincingly how depression can be reversed for good, without drugs. By treating the underlying causes of depression, rather than suppressing the symptoms as most pharmaceutical drugs do, you can have lasting recovery. So what does cause depression? Marohn identifies 16 different causes, from chemical and heavy metal toxicity to hormonal imbalances, t o food allergies and neurotransmitter deficiencies to intestinal problems and psychospiritual issues. And what heals it? Marohn reviews a rich array of successful, nondrug-based treatment approaches including applied psychoneurobiology, chelation, allergy elimination, neural therapy, anthroposophic medicine, acupuncture, herbs, homeopathy, CranioSacral therapy, flower essences, visceral manipulation, shamanic healing, and more. Marohn also draws from real-life patient stories to show how healing from depression works. It's all backed by science and clinical results. You don't have to learn how to cope with depression. The uplifting message of The Natural Medicine Guide to Depression is that you can actually heal your depression through proven treatments from natural medicine.

Melancholia

Author: Matthew Bell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316123758
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Book Description
Melancholia is a commonly experienced feeling, and one with a long and fascinating medical history which can be charted back to antiquity. Avoiding the simplistic binary opposition of constructivism and hard realism, this book argues that melancholia was a culture-bound syndrome which thrived in the West because of the structure of Western medicine since the Ancient Greeks, and because of the West's fascination with self-consciousness. While melancholia cannot be equated with modern depression, Matthew Bell argues that concepts from recent depression research can shed light on melancholia. Within a broad historical panorama, Bell focuses on ancient medical writing, especially the little-known but pivotal Rufus of Ephesus, and on the medicine and culture of early modern Europe. Separate chapters are dedicated to issues of gender and cultural difference, and the final chapter offers a survey of melancholia in the arts, explaining the prominence of melancholia - especially in literature.

Depression and the Divine

Author: David C. Wilson
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532662696
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
David Wilson's initial research into the phenomenon of prophecy in the Hebrew Bible suggested that many of the passages featuring prophets, and hitherto considered to be bizarre myths (or much-edited collections of traditions) were, in fact, sequences of dreams. Moreover, it was possible to compare the structure of these sequences with the structure of a night's sleep (hypnogram)--as revealed by modern sleep research--to demonstrate that the "sleeper" was depressed. This characteristic, depressive sleep architecture was then used to show that three characters in particular, Elijah, Jonah, and Adam--compared in the New Testament with Jesus--were all, in fact, depressed. Quite naturally, this raised further questions concerning the nature of Jesus himself: Was he merely a prophet? If he wasn't, how did he differ? If he was depressed, how was he able to function (and succeed in his mission) when Elijah and Jonah clearly had such great difficulties? These and other questions are raised throughout this book, and many of them are not new, but they are, however, changed forever when asked against a contextual background of altered states of consciousness (ASCs), and dreamform in particular.