Description
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.
Nassir Ghaemi's quest to make sense of the split between science and the art of psychiatry, pursued brilliantly in his previous writings, gallops ahead in this book, which ransacks the near empty cellars of post-modernism and reinstates common sense and tradition in a search for meaning in mental health and its disorders in modern life. -- Michael Trimble, M.D., Institute of Neurology, London Ghaemi's distinction between 'depression disease' and 'depression nondisease' is pioneering and will open the eyes of a number of disease-designers who are currently struggling so mightily to classify the illnesses of psychiatry. But Ghaemi, a distinguished psychiatrist of vast clinical experience, will also open many patients' eyes: Does my kind of depression need medication? If it isn't depression I have, what's going on with me? Even more penetrating: My happiness is abnormal? These are not trivial questions, and Ghaemi's mastery of literature as well as clinical learning makes the lessons go down mighty easily. -- Edward Shorter, Ph.D., FRSC, University of Toronto Ghaemi's great aptitude is for the provision of context. If the psychiatric encounter sometimes seems routine-paused at decisions about prescribing-still and always, so Ghaemi reminds us, it is grounded in the humane insights of generations of thinkers dedicated to the well-being of those who suffer. Ghaemi brings wisdom to bear on the series of challenges inherent in the treatment and understanding of depression. -- Peter D. Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac and Against Depression By any measure, this is an important book that goes where thinking about mental illness has never gone. Certainly it will play a role in proving that depression is almost a necessity to actually live and make sense of life. Nassir Ghaemi gives tremendous meaning to my own suffering. -- Andy Behrman, author of Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania Nassir Ghaemi blends the wisdom of a seasoned clinician, the hard data of rigorous, original research, and the long view of a scholar steeped in humanities. He is an indispensable voice and with this book-among many others-he has found his place among the eminent ranks of modern writers on depression. -- Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln's Melancholy
About the Author
Nassir Ghaemi, M.D., M.P.H., is a professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and the director of the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. He is author of the bestseller A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links between Leadership and Mental Illness, as well as The Rise and Fall of the Biopsychosocial Model: Reconciling Art and Science in Psychiatry and The Concepts of Psychiatry: A Pluralistic Approach to the Mind and Mental Illness, both published by Johns Hopkins.
Reviews
An informed, challenging, and readable approach to a vital subject. Despair is in the title, but readers will rejoice in the reading. Library Journal Ghaemi is a lucid and eminently reasonable writer. Zocalo Public Square [ On Depression] belongs in libraries serving graduate students of psychiatry, psychology, and, perhaps, philosophy. -- Melissa Nasea Watermark Clearly written, with mercifully short chapters for the uninitiated reader, Ghaemi's book elucidates how many of us already feel about the current construction of mood disorders, without having been able to articulate our misgivings. -- Alexander Langford British Journal of Psychiatry This is a fun and stimulating read for anyone interested in depression and other mood disorders. -- Helga Meier Metapsychology
Book Information
ISBN 9781421409337
Author S. Nassir Ghaemi
Format Hardback
Page Count 232
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 408g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 21mm
Nassir Ghaemi's quest to make sense of the split between science and the art of psychiatry, pursued brilliantly in his previous writings, gallops ahead in this book, which ransacks the near empty cellars of post-modernism and reinstates common sense and tradition in a search for meaning in mental health and its disorders in modern life. -- Michael Trimble, M.D., Institute of Neurology, London Ghaemi's distinction between 'depression disease' and 'depression nondisease' is pioneering and will open the eyes of a number of disease-designers who are currently struggling so mightily to classify the illnesses of psychiatry. But Ghaemi, a distinguished psychiatrist of vast clinical experience, will also open many patients' eyes: Does my kind of depression need medication? If it isn't depression I have, what's going on with me? Even more penetrating: My happiness is abnormal? These are not trivial questions, and Ghaemi's mastery of literature as well as clinical learning makes the lessons go down mighty easily. -- Edward Shorter, Ph.D., FRSC, University of Toronto Ghaemi's great aptitude is for the provision of context. If the psychiatric encounter sometimes seems routine-paused at decisions about prescribing-still and always, so Ghaemi reminds us, it is grounded in the humane insights of generations of thinkers dedicated to the well-being of those who suffer. Ghaemi brings wisdom to bear on the series of challenges inherent in the treatment and understanding of depression. -- Peter D. Kramer, author of Listening to Prozac and Against Depression By any measure, this is an important book that goes where thinking about mental illness has never gone. Certainly it will play a role in proving that depression is almost a necessity to actually live and make sense of life. Nassir Ghaemi gives tremendous meaning to my own suffering. -- Andy Behrman, author of Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania Nassir Ghaemi blends the wisdom of a seasoned clinician, the hard data of rigorous, original research, and the long view of a scholar steeped in humanities. He is an indispensable voice and with this book-among many others-he has found his place among the eminent ranks of modern writers on depression. -- Joshua Wolf Shenk, author of Lincoln's Melancholy
About the Author
Nassir Ghaemi, M.D., M.P.H., is a professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and the director of the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. He is author of the bestseller A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links between Leadership and Mental Illness, as well as The Rise and Fall of the Biopsychosocial Model: Reconciling Art and Science in Psychiatry and The Concepts of Psychiatry: A Pluralistic Approach to the Mind and Mental Illness, both published by Johns Hopkins.
Reviews
An informed, challenging, and readable approach to a vital subject. Despair is in the title, but readers will rejoice in the reading. Library Journal Ghaemi is a lucid and eminently reasonable writer. Zocalo Public Square [ On Depression] belongs in libraries serving graduate students of psychiatry, psychology, and, perhaps, philosophy. -- Melissa Nasea Watermark Clearly written, with mercifully short chapters for the uninitiated reader, Ghaemi's book elucidates how many of us already feel about the current construction of mood disorders, without having been able to articulate our misgivings. -- Alexander Langford British Journal of Psychiatry This is a fun and stimulating read for anyone interested in depression and other mood disorders. -- Helga Meier Metapsychology
Book Information
ISBN 9781421409337
Author S. Nassir Ghaemi
Format Hardback
Page Count 232
Imprint Johns Hopkins University Press
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Weight(grams) 408g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 140mm * 21mm
