Malignant Sadness : The Anatomy of Depression

Rating:
Summary: Informative, but stay away if you are a healthworker.
Review: A sufferer of depression myself, I am always on the look out for books dealing with the subject. My medical background as a nurse has enabled me to be thoroughly aware of the reasons of depression and the treatments available for it. I know why it happens and that is not what I needed to read about through out 185 pages of this book. One can't deny that Lewis Wolpert has written a very pbjective and concise book about depression and I would firmly recommend it for non healthworkers and people with no idea whatsoever about depression. However, anyone who is looking for some sort of self help book covering the subject or an elaborate account of a person's struggle with depression should look for other options. Another thing is that Wolpert has explained his own suffering in a very dry, non emotional way that just doesn't make me sympathise with him. The way he describes his turnmoil is stated in the same manner that a politician would use to describe his upcoming tax cuts..
Simply .. Not recommended unless you have never read about depression and needed some kind of medical reference book- too dry, too boring..

Rating:
Summary: Important, Provocative, & Informative Book On Depression!
Review: In a time so significantly distinguished by mass dyspepsia and personal crisis, this book is a significant contribution to better public understanding. In a country so singularly obsessed with the simple-minded solution of feeling better through pharmaceutical support by way of Prozac, Zoloft and all the whole class of new central psycho-active and regulative brain drugs of that ilk, this book shines a bright and illuminating light into the morass of serious psychiatric darkness. Indeed, what is most striking and valuable about Wolpert's approach to this massively interesting and endlessly complex issue is the fact that he makes a great effort to explain and detail exactly where the current state of knowledge is about this often baffling and extremely debilitating affliction. Depression is so widespread and so commonplace that the public knows it by a variety of everyday names such as the blues, or being "off", or just as being down.

Few of us are unaffected by its massive effects, since either we ourselves or someone we know and love is so profoundly affected by its symptoms. He threads his way knowingly through a mountain of data and scientific literature, sifting out tidbits of knowledge from to help us understand just how Depression works its evil within us. His balancing act as both an observer and a sufferer from its effects make his perceptions especially acute and valuable, as his description of what the experience itself is like is a powerful demonstration of just how disabling depression can be. I must also admit that I found his views especially interesting since I admit to a long-standing personal bias against psychiatrists and mental health care professionals based on my own adolescent and adult experiences with depression, which left me suspicious of both physicians and psychiatric professionals who often seem all too ready for simple solutions such as simply medicating the symptoms away, refusing to deal with what one believes to be the underlying causes of the malady.

Certainly Wolpert mounts a wall of impressive research findings to support his own perceptions, and his combination of such data with his own experiences sounded a responsive chord in my own admittedly limited experiences. He does not disappoint the reader in the sense that while one expects him to over-emphasize biological causes and the subsequent recourse to pharmaceutical relief, yet Wolpert (to his considerable credit) also examines and evaluates both psychological and environmental factors their due. Thus, while admitting that the current theory that serotonin plays a major role in depression is given too much credence, he also admits that he believes that pharmaceutically altering brain chemistry may offer a major possibility for relief from depression in the future.

My only qualm concerning his approach or his intellectual stance is that he seems to underplay what many believe are overwhelming indications that social and cultural factors may significantly influence the onset of depression and also often exacerbate its symptoms. In this sense the book falls short of being truly comprehensive, for without due consideration of the ways in which such social factors contribute to and foster the development and extension of depression in its members, we can never truly understand the degree to which its development is a psychiatric, as opposed to philosophical, response by increasingly vulnerable and sensitive individuals to the manifest ills of a world gone absolutely bonkers. This is a book I highly recommend.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully accessible explanation of depression.
Review: Lewis Wolpert is one of Britain's leading scientists. In particular, developmental biology. His other great love and drive is to make science accessible to 'ordinary' people. This book was written to accompany a six-part TV series run on BBC TV - the first time that depression has been given so much air-time.

He brings his incisive mind to bear on the subject of depression, and describes how this truly devastating and dreadful illness slid his legs from under him. He goes on to explore the symptoms and the various treatments. Interestingly, he does not cast aspersions on psychological treatments in favour of biological variants. In fact, he is astute enough to recognise that many of the 'softer' treatment modalities can affect brain chemistry through behavioural modification. Through his great desire to pass on much of what he uncovered, he distilled the information into this book which accompanied a six part TV series produced ny the BBC.

This is NOT a morbid book. It's aim is to enlighten the sufferer (and his carer) and perhaps point them in the direction of alternative options if their recovery isn't progressing well. It is also NOT a self-help book, in a far as Wolpert doesn't tell you how to treat yourself.

A great book and a great TV series.

Rating:
Summary: The is the book
Review: Thank you so much! The true, down to earth feelings that the author expressed when depressed and the feelings that coinsided were 100%! In this country as he talks about diseases such as Cancer are sympathised about, not Depression. It is thought of as a "weak person's disease, which family and friends try to keep quiet." It's not wrong to be depressed and certainly not wrong to share what you feel, and thank you for telling the world just that in your book! It was a comfort and an affirmation that there are successful people who are depressed, and can overcome it, only when they and the people around them are willing to accept it! Thank you again!

Rating:
Summary: concise presentation on the facts and options
Review: This book is for those who want the facts and options as related to major and bi-polar depression. It is not a "touchy-feely, sympathetic wallowing-in" of the subject, which is its appeal for me (in addition to its brevity and readability). It offers facts related to the possible mechanisms of depression and, more importantly, how these mechanisms can be changed. It is brief, but it is supplemented with plenty of citations. A good book if you don't quite have the time for "Noonday Demon" but would like to understand what depression is and, more importantly, the options for dealing with it.