Sadowsky, Jonathan H. (Author)
Polity Press
Physical Details: 224
Language: English
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.
...MoreReview Eva Andersen (2022) Review of "The Empire of Depression: A New History". Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences (pp. 131-133).
Similar Citations
Book
Alain Ehrenberg;
(2009)
The Weariness of the Self: Diagnosing the History of Depression in the Contemporary Age
Article
Horwitz, Allan V.;
(2011)
Naming the Problem That Has No Name: Creating Targets for Standardized Drugs
Article
Pieters, Toine;
Majerus, Benoît;
(2011)
The Introduction of Chlorpromazine in Belgium and the Netherlands (1951--1968); Tango between Old and New Treatment Features
Article
Marazia, Chantal;
(2011)
Philosophical Whitewashing. Ludwig Binswanger (1881--1966) and the Sterilisation of Manic-Depressive Patients
Book
Dowbiggin, Ian Robert;
(2011)
The Quest for Mental Health: A Tale of Science, Medicine, Scandal, Sorrow, and Mass Society
Book
Shorter, Edward;
(2009)
Before Prozac: The Troubled History of Mood Disorders in Psychiatry
Article
Rasmussen, Nicolas;
(2006)
Making the First Anti-Depressant: Amphetamine in American Medicine, 1929--1950
Thesis
Hanganu-Bresch, Cristina;
(2008)
Faces of Depression: A Study of Antidepressant Advertisements in the American and British Journals of Psychiatry, 1960--2004
Article
Molaro, Aurelio;
(2020)
La ‘logica immanente’ della follia: Biochimica e fenomenologia in Roland Kuhn (1912-2005)
Article
Åsa Jansson;
(2022)
From Melancholia to Depression: Disordered Mood in Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry
Book
Lawlor, Clark;
(2012)
From Melancholia to Prozac: A History of Depression
Article
Misbach, Judith;
Stam, Henderikus J.;
(2006)
Medicalizing Melancholia: Exploring Profiles of Psychiatric Professionalization
Book
Ghaemi, S. Nassir;
(2013)
On Depression: Drugs, Diagnosis, and Despair in the Modern World
Book
Laurens, André Du;
Suciu, Radu;
(2012)
Discours des maladies mélancoliques: 1594
Book
Blazer, Dan G.;
(2005)
The Age of Melancholy: “Major Depression” and Its Social Origins
Book
Borch-Jacobsen, Mikkel;
(2002)
Folies à Plusieurs: De l'hystérie à la dépression
Book
Martin, Emily;
(2007)
Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture
Book
Sarah Fawn Montgomery;
(2018)
Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir
Multimedia Object
Zoë Bossiere;
Sarah Fawn Montgomery;
(2020)
Sarah Fawn Montgomery, “Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir” (Mad Creek Books, 2018)
Article
Pieters, Toine;
Snelders, Stephen;
(2011)
Standardizing Psychotropic Drugs and Drug Practices in the Twentieth Century: Paradox of Order and Disorder
History of Psychiatry
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
Medizinhistorisches Journal
Physis: Rivista Internazionale di Storia della Scienza
Be the first to comment!