Peter D. Kramer - Against Depression

Against Depression

[Kramer] may have done more than anybody else to illuminate the clawing, scabrous, catastrophic monotony that is depressive illness.[An] eloquent, absorbingbook.

The New York Times Book Review

[ Against Depression ] successfully advances the cartography of a (quite literally) gray area between physical and mental illness.

The New York Times

Kramer examines depression with a cool, intelligent and sympathetic eye.

The Washington Post

Kramer presents a powerful argument against romanticizing (and thus tolerating) depression.

People

By turns poetic and academic, and always deeply felt, [Kramers] book is a polemic against a society that accepts depression as a fact of life.

O, the Oprah Magazine

[An] ambitious new foray into the always roiling nature versus nurture debate. [Kramer] is a lucid and shrewd popularizer of complex ideas.

Elle

Heartfelt[Kramer] explores the gap between common perceptions of depression and the scientific understanding of it. While not predicting that depression will be eliminated any time soon, Kramer brings hope to those afflicted by it. A clear, valuable exposition of the progress researchers are making in understanding an all-too-common disease.

Kirkus Reviews

A provocative take on the science and mythology of depression.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Highly recommended.

Library Journal

Kramers curiosity drives the book forward as he ponders why we value artwork and literature built on despair. The book maintains the perfect balance between science and human interest. An important addition to the growing public health campaign against depression.

Publishers Weekly

A paradigm-shiftThe book has the power, I think, to defang depression, to open eyes to how it is both more than we thought, and less.

Detroit Free Press (one of the Ten Best Books of the Year)

Peter Kramer is an analyst of exceptional sensitivity and insight. To read his prose on virtually any subject is to be provoked, enthralled, illuminated.

Joyce Carol Oates

Here one of our most thoughtful psychiatrists attends a wide-spread psychological maladythe bouts of melancholy that afflict so many individuals, laying them low in mind and spirit. This book offers much critical wisdom, even as it is written with a grace and sensitivity that will endear its words to the reader.

Robert Coles, professor of psychiatry and medical humanities, Harvard Medical School

In Against Depression , Peter Kramer opens our eyes once again to a fresh, important, and humane understanding of the human condition. His bold rethinking of the inner state we call depression gives us a clear scenario for freedom from the grip of this soul-searing disorder.

Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence

Our treasured sense of self is often challenged by neurosciencehow do you wedge Self in among neurons and synapses and neurotransmitters? No one has written about [our sense of self] in a more sensitive, thought-provoking and accessible way, and has touched more people in the process, than Peter Kramer.

Robert Sapolsky, professor of biological sciences, Stanford University

There is nothing romantic in the suffering of depression. Kramer shows us the horrific reality of the illness, dispelling myths that pervade popular culture. This book should usher in an era when the disordered chemistry of the brain is viewed with the same concern and care that mark the treatment of any malady.

Jerome Groopman, M. D., Recanti Professor of Medicine, Harvard University, and author of The Anatomy of Hope

PENGUIN BOOKS

AGAINST DEPRESSION

Peter D. Kramer, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Brown University, is the author of Should You Leave?, Moments of Engagement, Spectacular Happiness , and the international bestseller Listening to Prozac . Dr. Kramer is also the host of the public radio mental health program The Infinite Mind . He lives in Providence, Rhode Island

Against Depression

PETER D. KRAMER

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2005

Published in Penguin Books 2006

Copyright Peter D. Kramer, 2005

All rights reserved

THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:

Kramer, Peter D.

Against depression / Peter D. Kramer.
p. cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-1012-0114-5

1. Depression, Mental. 2. Depression, MentalTreatment. I. Title.

RC537.K725 2005
616.85'27dc22 2004061228

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

For Grossmutti,
the Omas and the Opas,
and Eric and Lore

Contents

Prologue

I HOPE THAT THIS BOOK will prove helpful in ways that are concrete and immediate. I mean, helpful to people who have decisions to make about depressionwhether and how vigorously to treat it, in themselves or in someone they love. Certain chapters can be put to that sort of use. Sometimes I tell stories from my practice, in order to say how depression looks to a doctor who tries to lessen the harm it does. I discuss recent research and biological treatments, practical and visionary, to bring into focus a new picture of depression, as it is emerging in contemporary science.

But I think it only fair to say up front that this book is less about what to do, here and now, than about meaning. How do we understand depression? How shall we address it? On these issues, I take a decided stand. I have written a polemic, an insistent argument for the proposition that depression is a disease, one we would do well to oppose wholeheartedly.

You may think that we have no need of such an argument. Increasingly, our governments, state and federal, require that depression be accorded full status as a disease, for purposes of insurance coverage and disability determination. Public health groups wage campaigns against depression. There can be no controversy over a belief we already own.