On depression : drugs, diagnosis, and despair in the modern world / Nassir Ghaemi.

Author
Ghaemi, S. Nassir [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
  • Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, [2013]
  • ©2013
Description
215 pages ; 23 cm

Availability

Available Online

Copies in the Library

Location Call Number Status Location Service Notes
Firestone Library - Stacks RC537 .G43 2013 Browse related items Request

    Details

    Subject(s)
    Summary note
    "In a culture obsessed with youth, financial success, and achieving happiness, is it possible to live an authentic, meaningful life? Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Mood Disorder Program at Tufts Medical Center, reflects on our society's current quest for happiness and rejection of any emotion resembling sadness. On Depression asks readers to consider the benefits of despair and the foibles of an unexamined life. Too often depression as disease is mistreated or not treated at all. Ghaemi warns against the "pretenders" who confuse our understanding of depression--both those who deny disease and those who use psychiatric diagnosis "pragmatically" or unscientifically. But experiencing sadness, even depression, can also have benefits. Ghaemi asserts that we can create a "narrative of ourselves such that we know and accept who we are," leading to a deeper, lasting level of contentment and a more satisfying personal and public life. Depression is complex, and we need guides to help us understand it, guides who comprehend it existentially as part of normal human experience and clinically as sometimes needing the right kind of treatment, including medications. Ghaemi discusses these guides in detail, thinkers like Viktor Frankl, Rollo May, Karl Jaspers, and Leston Havens, among others. On Depression combines examples from philosophy and the history of medicine with psychiatric principles informed by the author's clinical experience with people who struggle with mental illness. He has seen great achievements arise from great suffering and feels that understanding depression can provide important insights into happiness." -- Publisher's description.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references and index.
    Contents
    • Lives of quiet desperation
    • The varieties of depressive experience
    • Abnormal happiness
    • The age of Prozac
    • The unknown Hippocrates
    • Postmodernism debunked
    • Pharmageddon?
    • Creating major depressive disorder
    • The DSM wars
    • Viktor Frankl : learning to suffer
    • Rollo May and Elvin Semrad : I am, we are
    • Leston havens : holding opposed ideas at once
    • Paul Roazen : being honest about the past
    • Karl Jaspers : keeping faith
    • The banality of mental health
    • Two o'clock in the morning.
    ISBN
    • 9781421409337 ((hardcover ; : alk. paper))
    • 142140933X ((hardcover ; : alk. paper))
    LCCN
    2012036893
    OCLC
    809886773
    Statement on language in description
    Princeton University Library aims to describe library materials in a manner that is respectful to the individuals and communities who create, use, and are represented in the collections we manage. Read more...
    Other views
    Staff view