Book - BookDetective

Name: Manufacturing Depression

Author: Gary Greenberg
Year: 2010
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Genres/categories:
Psychology, Non Fiction, Science, History, Health

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• Author with professional and personal experience: Psychotherapist Gary Greenberg's musings on the intersection of science, politics, and ethics have graced the pages of The New Yorker , Wired , and Mother Jones. A longtime sufferer of depression, in 2007 he enrolled himself in a clinical trial for major depression (after his initial application for a minor depression trial was rejected). He wrote about his experience in a Harper's magazine piece, which received a tremendous response from readers..• "Am I happy enough?": This has been a pivotal question since America's inception. Am I not happy enough because I am depressed? is a more recent version. Greenberg shows how depression has been manufactured--not as an illness, but as an idea about our suffering, its source, and its relief. He challenges us to look at depression in a new way..

• A nation of depressives: In the twenty years since their introduction, antidepressants have become staples of our medicine chests--upwards of 30 million Americans are taking them at an annual cost of more than $10 billion. Even more important, Greenberg argues, it has become common, if not mandatory, to think of our unhappiness as a disease that can, and should, be treated by medication. Manufacturing Depression tells the story of how we got to this peculiar point in our history. .