Download or read book The Empire of Depression written by Jonathan Sadowsky and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-10-22 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Depression has colonized the world. Today, more than 300 million of us have been diagnosed as depressed. But 150 years ago, "depression" referred to a mood, not a sickness. Does that mean people weren't sick before, only sad? Of course not. Mental illness is a complex thing, part biological, part social, its definition dependent on time and place. But in the mid-twentieth century, even as European empires were crumbling, new Western clinical models and treatments for mental health spread across the world. In so doing, "depression" began to displace older ideas like "melancholia," the Japanese "utsushô," or the Punjabi "sinking heart" syndrome. Award-winning historian Jonathan Sadowsky tells this global story, chronicling the path-breaking work of psychiatrists and pharmacists, and the intimate sufferings of patients. Revealing the continuity of human distress across time and place, he shows us how different cultures have experienced intense mental anguish, and how they have tried to alleviate it. He reaches an unflinching conclusion: the devastating effects of depression are real. A number of treatments do reduce suffering, but a permanent cure remains elusive. Throughout the history of depression, there have been overzealous promoters of particular approaches, but history shows us that there is no single way to get better that works for everyone. Like successful psychotherapy, history can liberate us from the negative patterns of the past.

Download or read book The World in Depression 1929 1939 written by Charles Poor Kindleberger and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The World in Depression is the best book on the subject, and the subject, in turn, is the economically decisive decade of the century so far."--John Kenneth Galbraith

Download or read book From Melancholia to Prozac written by Clark Lawlor and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-02-23 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Depression is an experience known to millions. But arguments rage on aspects of its definition and its impact on societies present and past: do drugs work, or are they merely placebos? Is the depression we have today merely a construct of the pharmaceutical industry? Is depression under- or over-diagnosed? Should we be paying for expensive 'talking cure' treatments like psychoanalysis or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy? Here, Clark Lawlor argues that understanding the history of depression is important to understanding its present conflicted status and definition. While it is true that our modern understanding of the word 'depression' was formed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the condition was originally known as melancholia, and characterised by core symptoms of chronic causeless sadness and fear. Beginning in the Classical period, and moving on to the present, Lawlor shows both continuities and discontinuities in the understanding of what we now call depression, and in the way it has been represented in literature and art. Different cultures defined and constructed melancholy and depression in ways sometimes so different as to be almost unrecognisable. Even the present is still a dynamic history, in the sense that the 'new' form of depression, defined in the 1980s and treated by drugs like Prozac, is under attack by many theories that reject the biomedical model and demand a more humanistic idea of depression - one that perhaps returns us to a form of melancholy.

Download or read book Lessons from the Great Depression written by Peter Temin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1991-10-08 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lessons from the Great Depression provides an integrated view of the depression, covering the experience in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States. Do events of the 1930s carry a message for the 1990s? Lessons from the Great Depression provides an integrated view of the depression, covering the experience in Britain, France, Germany, and the United States. It describes the causes of the depression, why it was so widespread and prolonged, and what brought about eventual recovery. Peter Temin also finds parallels in recent history, in the relentless deflationary course followed by the U.S. Federal Reserve Board and the British government in the early 1980s, and in the dogged adherence by the Reagan administration to policies generated by a discredited economic theory—supply-side economics.

Download or read book Manufacturing Depression written by Gary Greenberg and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-02-02 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Am I depressed or just unhappy? In the last two decades, antidepressants have become staples of our medicine cabinets—doctors now write 120 million prescriptions annually, at a cost of more than 10 billion dollars. At the same time, depression rates have skyrocketed; twenty percent of Americans are now expected to suffer from it during their lives. Doctors, and drug companies, claim that this convergence is a public health triumph: the recognition and treatment of an under-diagnosed illness. Gary Greenberg, a practicing therapist and longtime depressive, raises a more disturbing possibility: that the disease has been manufactured to suit (and sell) the cure. Greenberg draws on sources ranging from the Bible to current medical journals to show how the idea that unhappiness is an illness has been packaged and sold by brilliant scientists and shrewd marketing experts—and why it has been so successful. Part memoir, part intellectual history, part exposé—including a vivid chronicle of his participation in a clinical antidepressant trial—Manufacturing Depression is an incisive look at an epidemic that has changed the way we have come to think of ourselves.

Download or read book Intersectionality written by Patricia Hill Collins and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-09-26 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of intersectionality has become a hot topic in academic and activist circles alike. But what exactly does it mean, and why has it emerged as such a vital lens through which to explore how social inequalities of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, ability and ethnicity shape one another? In this new book Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge provide a much-needed, introduction to the field of intersectional knowledge and praxis. They analyze the emergence, growth and contours of the concept and show how intersectional frameworks speak to topics as diverse as human rights, neoliberalism, identity politics, immigration, hip hop, global social protest, diversity, digital media, Black feminism in Brazil, violence and World Cup soccer. Accessibly written and drawing on a plethora of lively examples to illustrate its arguments, the book highlights intersectionality's potential for understanding inequality and bringing about social justice oriented change. Intersectionality will be an invaluable resource for anyone grappling with the main ideas, debates and new directions in this field.

Download or read book A First Rate Madness written by Nassir Ghaemi and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-06-26 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestseller “A glistening psychological history, faceted largely by the biographies of eight famous leaders . . .” —The Boston Globe “A provocative thesis . . . Ghaemi’s book deserves high marks for original thinking.” —The Washington Post “Provocative, fascinating.” —Salon.com Historians have long puzzled over the apparent mental instability of great and terrible leaders alike: Napoleon, Lincoln, Churchill, Hitler, and others. In A First-Rate Madness, Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center, offers a myth-shattering exploration of the powerful connections between mental illness and leadership and sets forth a controversial, compelling thesis: The very qualities that mark those with mood disorders also make for the best leaders in times of crisis. From the importance of Lincoln's "depressive realism" to the lackluster leadership of exceedingly sane men as Neville Chamberlain, A First-Rate Madness overturns many of our most cherished perceptions about greatness and the mind.

Download or read book Citizens of the Empire written by Robert Jensen and published by City Lights Books. This book was released on 2004-04 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As we approach the elections of 2004, U.S. progressives are faced with the challenge of how to confront our unresponsive and apparently untouchable power structures. With millions of antiwar demonstrators glibly dismissed as a "focus group," and with the collapse of political and intellectual dialogue into slogans and soundbites used to stifle protest-"Support the Troops," "We Are the Greatest Nation on Earth," etc.-many people feel cynical and hopeless. Citizens of the Empire probes into the sense of disempowerment that has resulted from the Left's inability to halt the violent and repressive course of post-9/11 U.S. policy. In this passionate and personal exploration of what it means to be a citizen of the world's most powerful, affluent and militarized nation in an era of imperial expansion, Jensen offers a potent antidote to despair over the future of democracy. In a plainspoken analysis of the dominant political rhetoric-which is intentionally crafted to depress political discourse and activism-Jensen reveals the contradictions and falsehoods of prevailing myths, using common-sense analogies that provide the reader with a clear-thinking rebuttal and a way to move forward with progressive political work and discussions. With an ethical framework that integrates political, intellectual and emotional responses to the disheartening events of the past two years, Jensen examines the ways in which society has been led to this point and offers renewed hope for constructive engagement. Robert Jensen is a professor of media law, ethics and politics at the University of Texas, Austin. He is the author of Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream, among other books. He also writes for popular media, and his opinion and analytical pieces on foreign policy, politics and race have appeared in papers and magazines throughout the United States.

Download or read book The Great Depression written by Robert S. McElvaine and published by Crown. This book was released on 2010-10-27 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the classic studies of the Great Depression, featuring a new introduction by the author with insights into the economic crises of 1929 and today. In the twenty-five years since its publication, critics and scholars have praised historian Robert McElvaine’s sweeping and authoritative history of the Great Depression as one of the best and most readable studies of the era. Combining clear-eyed insight into the machinations of politicians and economists who struggled to revive the battered economy, personal stories from the average people who were hardest hit by an economic crisis beyond their control, and an evocative depiction of the popular culture of the decade, McElvaine paints an epic picture of an America brought to its knees—but also brought together by people’s widely shared plight. In a new introduction, McElvaine draws striking parallels between the roots of the Great Depression and the economic meltdown that followed in the wake of the credit crisis of 2008. He also examines the resurgence of anti-regulation free market ideology, beginning in the Reagan era, and argues that some economists and politicians revised history and ignored the lessons of the Depression era.

Download or read book Asylum written by Joe Pantoliano and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2013-04-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people know Joe Pantoliano from his memorable roles in The Sopranos, The Goonies, The Matrix, The Fugitive, and Risky Business, but the Emmy-winning artist has another important role—as an outspoken advocate for smashing the stigma of mental illness, or mental “dis-ease” as he prefers to call it. As a kid in Hoboken, New Jersey, he was just “Joey Pants,” the son of a fiercely controlling, schizophrenic mother. As he grew up, Joey always knew he was different. “It was as if I was born with a huge hole inside of me,” he writes. Much later in life he would be diagnosed with clinical depression, and now he has a message for the millions of people who suffer from mental illness, and for the friends and family who care for them: you are not alone. Asylum is the story of Joe’s Hollywood success, his undiagnosed mental illness, and substance abuse, and how all three led to his awareness, diagnosis, recovery, and public activism. Picking up where his first memoir, Who’s Sorry Now, left off, this unflinching memoir will resonate with victims of mental illness and others who have witnessed its devastating effects and will give all his readers understanding and hope for the future.

Download or read book The Great Persuasion written by Angus Burgin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just as economists struggle today to justify the free market after the global economic crisis, an earlier generation revisited their worldview after the Great Depression. In this intellectual history of that project, Burgin traces the evolution of postwar economic thought in order to reconsider the most basic assumptions of a market-centered world.

Download or read book Our Psychiatric Future written by Nikolas Rose and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-11-26 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our everyday lives are increasingly intertwined with psychiatry and discussions of mental health. Yet the dominant medical discipline of psychiatry remains surrounded by controversy. Is mental distress really an illness like any other, treatable by drugs? Can psychiatrists differentiate between mental disorders normal eccentricities, anxieties or even sadness? Should the power of psychiatrists be challenged by the knowledge of those with lived experience of mental ill health? In this penetrating analysis, Nikolas Rose critiques the powerful part that psychiatry has come to play in the lives of so many across the world. A series of chapters, each tackling an area of dispute head on, opens wide the terrain of debate addressing issues such as advances in brain science, the politics of Western psychiatry's spread across the globe, and recent evidence of social adversity's role in producing mental ill health. The answers we find to these pressing questions will shape the psychiatric futures that are being brought into existence. Ultimately, this book proposes a radically different future, no less evidence-based or rigorous, and indeed far more attuned to the realities of mental health, and argues that, as a branch of social medicine, another psychiatry is possible.

Download or read book The Second Great Depression written by Warren Brussee and published by Booklocker.Com Incorporated. This book was released on 2005 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shows how massive consumer debt will trigger the next depression, starting about the year 2007. Most of the logic used to support this premise is based on the government's own published data.

Download or read book Personal Legacies written by Robin A. Edgar and published by . This book was released on 2011-05-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book How To Be Depressed written by George Scialabba and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2020-03-20 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An unusual, searching, and poignant memoir of one man's quest to make sense of depression George Scialabba is a prolific critic and essayist known for his incisive, wide-ranging commentary on literature, philosophy, religion, and politics. He is also, like millions of others, a lifelong sufferer from clinical depression. In How To Be Depressed, Scialabba presents an edited selection of his mental health records spanning decades of treatment, framed by an introduction and an interview with renowned podcaster Christopher Lydon. The book also includes a wry and ruminative collection of "tips for the depressed," organized into something like a glossary of terms—among which are the names of numerous medications he has tried or researched over the years. Together, these texts form an unusual, searching, and poignant hybrid of essay and memoir, inviting readers into the hospital and the therapy office as Scialabba and his caregivers try to make sense of this baffling disease. In Scialabba's view, clinical depression amounts to an "utter waste." Unlike heart surgery or a broken leg, there is no relaxing convalescence and nothing to be learned (except, perhaps, who your friends are). It leaves you weakened and bewildered, unsure why you got sick or how you got well, praying that it never happens again but certain that it will. Scialabba documents his own struggles and draws from them insights that may prove useful to fellow-sufferers and general readers alike. In the place of dispensable banalities—"Hold on," "You will feel better," and so on—he offers an account of how it's been for him, in the hope that doing so might prove helpful to others.

Download or read book Abortion Politics written by Ziad Munson and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-05-21 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abortion has remained one of the most volatile and polarizing issues in the United States for over four decades. Americans are more divided today than ever over abortion, and this debate colors the political, economic, and social dynamics of the country. This book provides a balanced, clear-eyed overview of the abortion debate, including the perspectives of both the pro-life and pro-choice movements. It covers the history of the debate from colonial times to the present, the mobilization of mass movements around the issue, the ways it is understood by ordinary Americans, the impact it has had on US political development, and the differences between the abortion conflict in the US and the rest of the world. Throughout these discussions, Ziad Munson demonstrates how the meaning of abortion has shifted to reflect the changing anxieties and cultural divides which it has come to represent. Abortion Politics is an invaluable companion for exploring the abortion issue and what it has to say about American society, as well as the dramatic changes in public understanding of women’s rights, medicine, religion, and partisanship.

Download or read book The New Depression written by Richard Duncan and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-04-03 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the global recession is in danger of becoming another Great Depression, and how we can stop it When the United States stopped backing dollars with gold in 1968, the nature of money changed. All previous constraints on money and credit creation were removed and a new economic paradigm took shape. Economic growth ceased to be driven by capital accumulation and investment as it had been since before the Industrial Revolution. Instead, credit creation and consumption began to drive the economic dynamic. In The New Depression: The Breakdown of the Paper Money Economy, Richard Duncan introduces an analytical framework, The Quantity Theory of Credit, that explains all aspects of the calamity now unfolding: its causes, the rationale for the government's policy response to the crisis, what is likely to happen next, and how those developments will affect asset prices and investment portfolios. In his previous book, The Dollar Crisis (2003), Duncan explained why a severe global economic crisis was inevitable given the flaws in the post-Bretton Woods international monetary system, and now he's back to explain what's next. The economic system that emerged following the abandonment of sound money requires credit growth to survive. Yet the private sector can bear no additional debt and the government's creditworthiness is deteriorating rapidly. Should total credit begin to contract significantly, this New Depression will become a New Great Depression, with disastrous economic and geopolitical consequences. That outcome is not inevitable, and this book describes what must be done to prevent it. Presents a fascinating look inside the financial crisis and how the New Depression is poised to become a New Great Depression Introduces a new theoretical construct, The Quantity Theory of Credit, that is the key to understanding not only the developments that led to the crisis, but also to understanding how events will play out in the years ahead Offers unique insights from the man who predicted the global economic breakdown Alarming but essential reading, The New Depression explains why the global economy is teetering on the brink of falling into a deep and protracted depression, and how we can restore stability.