On Depression: Drugs, Diagnosis, and Despair in the Modern World
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
Lasting happiness comes not from chasing the American dream but from living an authentic life—which includes despair.
In a culture obsessed with youth, financial success, and achieving happiness, is it possible to live an authentic, meaningful life? Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Mood Disorder Program at Tufts Medical Center, reflects on our society's current quest for happiness and rejection of any emotion resembling sadness. On Depression asks readers to consider the benefits of despair and the foibles of an unexamined life.
Too often depression as disease is mistreated or not treated at all. Ghaemi warns against the "pretenders" who confuse our understanding of depression—both those who deny disease and those who use psychiatric diagnosis "pragmatically" or unscientifically. But experiencing sadness, even depression, can also have benefits. Ghaemi asserts that we can create a "narrative of ourselves such that we know and accept who we are," leading to a deeper, lasting level of contentment and a more satisfying personal and public life.
Depression is complex, and we need guides to help us understand it, guides who comprehend it existentially as part of normal human experience and clinically as sometimes needing the right kind of treatment, including medications. Ghaemi discusses these guides in detail, thinkers like Viktor Frankl, Rollo May, Karl Jaspers, and Leston Havens, among others.
On Depression combines examples from philosophy and the history of medicine with psychiatric principles informed by the author's clinical experience with people who struggle with mental illness. He has seen great achievements arise from great suffering and feels that understanding depression can provide important insights into happiness.
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
S. Nassir Ghaemi. (2013). On Depression: Drugs, Diagnosis, and Despair in the Modern World. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)S. Nassir Ghaemi. 2013. On Depression: Drugs, Diagnosis, and Despair in the Modern World. Johns Hopkins University Press.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)S. Nassir Ghaemi, On Depression: Drugs, Diagnosis, and Despair in the Modern World. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
MLA Citation (style guide)S. Nassir Ghaemi. On Depression: Drugs, Diagnosis, and Despair in the Modern World. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 1 | 1 |
OverDrive Product Record
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/3161-1/{BE57B8AA-A803-4527-99DD-CA3E1E6DE590}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/3161-1/{BE57B8AA-A803-4527-99DD-CA3E1E6DE590}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/3161-1/BE5/7B8/AA/{BE57B8AA-A803-4527-99DD-CA3E1E6DE590}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/3161-1/BE5/7B8/AA/{BE57B8AA-A803-4527-99DD-CA3E1E6DE590}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- formats
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781421409344
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B00DPSWXYA
- name: Kindle Book
- id: ebook-kindle
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781421409344
- name: OverDrive Read
- id: ebook-overdrive
- identifiers:
- mediaType
- eBook
- primaryCreator
- role: Author
- name: S. Nassir Ghaemi
- title
- On Depression
- dateAdded
- 2017-02-02T22:20:00Z
- contentDetails
- href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=1315817
- type: text/html
- account:
- name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
- id: 1151
- sortTitle
- On Depression Drugs Diagnosis and Despair in the Modern World
- crossRefId
- 1315817
- subtitle
- Drugs, Diagnosis, and Despair in the Modern World
- id
- BE57B8AA-A803-4527-99DD-CA3E1E6DE590
- starRating
- 3.4
OverDrive MetaData
- isPublicDomain
- False
- formats
- fileName: OnDepression_9781421409344_1315817
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 1944569
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781421409344
- rights:
- type: Copying
- value: 0
- type: Printing
- value: -1
- type: Lending
- value: 0
- type: ReadAloud
- value: 1
- type: ExpirationRights
- value: 0
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- onSaleDate: 7/1/2013
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/on-depression?.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: OnDepression_1315817
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B00DPSWXYA
- name: Kindle Book
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-kindle
- onSaleDate: 7/1/2013
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/on-depression?.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: OnDepression_9781421409344_1315817
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781421409344
- name: OverDrive Read
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-overdrive
- onSaleDate: 7/1/2013
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/on-depression?.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- creators
- role: Author
- fileAs: Ghaemi, S. Nassir
- bioText:
Nassir Ghaemi, M.D., M.P.H., is a professor of psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and the director of the Mood Disorders Program at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. He is author of the bestseller A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links between Leadership and Mental Illness, as well as The Rise and Fall of the Biopsychosocial Model: Reconciling Art and Science in Psychiatry and The Concepts of Psychiatry: A Pluralistic Approach to the Mind and Mental Illness, both published by Johns Hopkins.
- name: S. Nassir Ghaemi
- publishDate
- 2013-07-01T00:00:00-04:00
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- On Depression
- fullDescription
Lasting happiness comes not from chasing the American dream but from living an authentic life—which includes despair.
In a culture obsessed with youth, financial success, and achieving happiness, is it possible to live an authentic, meaningful life? Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Mood Disorder Program at Tufts Medical Center, reflects on our society's current quest for happiness and rejection of any emotion resembling sadness. On Depression asks readers to consider the benefits of despair and the foibles of an unexamined life.
Too often depression as disease is mistreated or not treated at all. Ghaemi warns against the "pretenders" who confuse our understanding of depression—both those who deny disease and those who use psychiatric diagnosis "pragmatically" or unscientifically. But experiencing sadness, even depression, can also have benefits. Ghaemi asserts that we can create a "narrative of ourselves such that we know and accept who we are," leading to a deeper, lasting level of contentment and a more satisfying personal and public life.
Depression is complex, and we need guides to help us understand it, guides who comprehend it existentially as part of normal human experience and clinically as sometimes needing the right kind of treatment, including medications. Ghaemi discusses these guides in detail, thinkers like Viktor Frankl, Rollo May, Karl Jaspers, and Leston Havens, among others.
On Depression combines examples from philosophy and the history of medicine with psychiatric principles informed by the author's clinical experience with people who struggle with mental illness. He has seen great achievements arise from great suffering and feels that understanding depression can provide important insights into happiness.
- reviews
- premium: False
- source: Library Journal
- content: An informed, challenging, and readable approach to a vital subject. Despair is in the title, but readers will rejoice in the reading.
—Library Journal
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
May 27, 2013
The key to happiness might be sadness—or maybe we need to expand our definition of “happiness” to include more introspectively low states, argues Tufts University psychiatry professor Ghaemi (A First-Rate Madness) in this scientific and philosophical treatise on depression. The author blames our culture of widespread discontent on two phenomena: the death of God and postmodernism. The former has made us to feel purposeless, while the latter has undermined psychiatric nosology by blurring the line between physical and existential symptoms. These cultural malaises have combined with overly prescriptive psychiatric practices to disastrous effect. Ghaemi spends the first part of the book outlining the intricacies of this large-scale problem before going on to profile several thinkers, or “guides” (including Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl), whose wisdom he believes can lead individuals toward a clearer understanding of themselves and their experiences of happiness and sadness. Ghaemi acknowledges that drugs do work for some people, and though his ideas about the necessity of pain and sitting through suffering are nothing new, his theory that understanding happiness requires accepting its impossibility—or at least embracing our time in the trenches—presents our darker moods in a more optimistic light.
- popularity
- 42
- links
- self:
- href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/be57b8aa-a803-4527-99dd-ca3e1e6de590/metadata
- type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
- self:
- id
- be57b8aa-a803-4527-99dd-ca3e1e6de590
- starRating
- 3.4
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/3161-1/{BE57B8AA-A803-4527-99DD-CA3E1E6DE590}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/3161-1/{BE57B8AA-A803-4527-99DD-CA3E1E6DE590}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/3161-1/BE5/7B8/AA/{BE57B8AA-A803-4527-99DD-CA3E1E6DE590}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/3161-1/BE5/7B8/AA/{BE57B8AA-A803-4527-99DD-CA3E1E6DE590}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- isPublicPerformanceAllowed
- False
- languages
- code: en
- name: English
- subjects
- value: Medical
- value: Psychology
- value: Self-Improvement
- value: Nonfiction
- publishDateText
- 07/01/2013
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781421409337
- mediaType
- eBook
- shortDescription
Lasting happiness comes not from chasing the American dream but from living an authentic life—which includes despair.
In a culture obsessed with youth, financial success, and achieving happiness, is it possible to live an authentic, meaningful life? Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Mood Disorder Program at Tufts Medical Center, reflects on our society's current quest for happiness and rejection of any emotion resembling sadness. On Depression asks readers to consider the benefits of despair and the foibles of an unexamined life.
Too often depression as disease is mistreated or not treated at all. Ghaemi warns against the "pretenders" who confuse our understanding of depression—both those who deny disease and those who use psychiatric diagnosis "pragmatically" or unscientifically. But experiencing sadness, even depression, can also have benefits. Ghaemi asserts that we can create a "narrative of ourselves such that we know and accept who we are," leading...
- sortTitle
- On Depression Drugs Diagnosis and Despair in the Modern World
- crossRefId
- 1315817
- subtitle
- Drugs, Diagnosis, and Despair in the Modern World
- publisher
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- tableOfContents
Preface
Part I: Entrance
1. Lives of Quiet Desperation
2. The Varieties of Depressive Experience
3. Abnormal Happiness
4. The Age of Prozac
5. The Unknown Hippocrates
Part II: Pretenders
6. Postmodernism Debunked
7. Pharmageddon?
8. Creating Major Depressive Disorder
9. The DSM Wars
Part III: Guides
10. Viktor Frankl: Learning to Suffer
11. Rollo May and Elvin Semrad: I Am, We Are
12. Leston Havens: Holding Opposed Ideas at Once
13. Paul Roazen: Being Honest about the Past
14. Karl Jaspers: Keeping Faith
Part IV: Exit
15. The Banality of Normality
16. Two O'clock in the Morning
Acknowledgments
Appendix: Listening to Despair: An Interview by Leston Havens
Notes
Bibliography
Index- bisacCodes
- code: MED039000
- description: Medical / History
- code: MED105000
- description: Medical / Psychiatry / General
- code: PSY036000
- description: Psychology / Mental Health
- code: PSY049000
- description: Psychology / Psychopathology / Depression
- code: SEL011000
- description: Self-Help / Mood Disorders / Depression
