This extraordinarily moving, shocking, eye-opening and beautifully written book is set to become a classic of our time - the new millennium's key text on depression, stress, and the way we live today. Solomon tells his story from both the inside and the outside. The book digs deep into personal history, as Solomon narrates, brilliantly and terrifyingly, his own agonizing experiences.
From there he moves on to portray the pain of others, in different cultures and societies, whose lives have been shattered by depression. Encompassing the larger questions that surround his subject, he uncovers the historical, social, biological, chemical, and medical implications of this crippling disease.
He takes us through the halls of mental hospitals where some of his subjects have been imprisoned for decades; into the labs where leading researchers are working out new ways to image the brain; to the burdened and afflicted poor, rural and urban. He talks to faith healers, considers the power of suggestion, and voyages around the world in a quest for folk wisdom.
Going back to ancient Greece, where Hippocrates predicted the antidepressant revolution, Solomon looks at how the rise of Christianity formed our current attitudes to the malady. He analyses the medications and pharmaceutical cocktails of today, and investigates extreme measures, including electro-shock and brain surgery.
He reviews the politics of diagnosis and treatment. And, perhaps most significantly, he looks at the vital role of will and love in the process of recovery. For Solomon, to look at depression and the emotions that surround it is to examine what it is to have a self, what it is to be human.
Intensely affecting, vitally intelligent, constructive, humane, and at times even humorous, this book could change minds and save lives.
Winner of the US National Book Award for Non-Fiction.
