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Manic-Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression, Second Edition by Frederick K. Goodwin and Kay Redfield Jamison chronicles the medical treatment of manic and depressive episodes, strategies for preventing future episodes, and psychotherapeutic issues common in this illness. In the excerpt below the authors introduce their second edition.

It has been 17 years since the publication of the first edition of this text; they have been the most explosively productive years in the history of medical science. In every field relevant to our understanding of manic-depressive illness—genetics, neurobiology, psychology and neuropsychology, neuroanatomy, diagnosis, and treatment—we have gained a staggering amount of knowledge. Scientists and clinicians have gone an impressive distance toward fulfilling the hopes articulated by Emil Kraepelin in the introduction to his 1899 textbook on psychiatry. (more…)

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Earlier today we posted a Q & A with Allan V. Horwitz, co-author with Jerome C. Wakefield, of The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder. Below is an excerpt from the book which uses Willy Loman from Death of A Salesman to show how our perceptions of sadness have changed over time.

The Concept of Depression

The poet W. H. Auden famously deemed the period after World War II the “age of anxiety.” For Auden, the intense anxiety of that era was a normal human response to extraordinary circumstances, such as the devastation of modern warfare, the horrors of the concentration camps, the development of nuclear weapons, and the tensions of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Were Auden still alive, he might conclude that the era around the turn of the twenty-first century is the “age of depression.” (more…)

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Amid claims that one out of ten Americans suffer from Depression, and that 25% succumb at some point in their lives, Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield argue in their new book, The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder that, while depressive disorder certainly exists, the apparent epidemic in fact reflects the way the psychiatric profession has understood and reclassified normal human sadness as largely an abnormal experience. Allan V. Horwitz, PhD, is a Professor of Sociology and Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Rutgers University and has been kind enough to answer a few questions about his new book for us. Check back later today for an excerpt.

OUP: In your introduction you mention that you work in the sociology of stress. Can you explain what it is and how it led you to work on this particular book with Dr. Wakefield? (more…)

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