Depression: Integrating Science, Culture, and Humanities [Hardcover]

We live in an era of depression, a condition that causes extensive suffering for individuals and families and saps our collective productivity. Yet there remains considerable confusion about how to understand depression. Depression: Integrating Science, Culture, and Humanities looks at the varied and multiple models through which depression is understood. Highlighting how depression is increasingly seen through models of biomedicineand through biomedical catch-alls such as  broken brains and chemical imbalances psychiatrist and cultural studies scholar Bradley Lewis shows how depression is also understood through a variety of other contemporary models. Furthermore, Lewis explores the different ways that depression has been categorized, described, and experienced across history and across cultures.

Introduction. PART I: The Facts. 1. What We Teach Our Doctors. 2. What We Also Know. PART II: Historical and Cultural Context. 3. Western History. 4. Cultural Context. PART III: Theoretical and Clinical Concerns. 5. What We Will Never Know. 6. Clinical Encounters. Conclusion.In Depression: Integrating Science, Culture, and Humanities, Bradley Lewis examines the various biomedical and socio-cultural ways in which depression has been categorized, described, and experienced across history and across cultures.

Bradley Lewis is Associate Professor at New York Universitys Gallatin School of Individualized Study with affiliated appointments in the Department of Psychiatry, the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, and the Division of Medical Humanities. He has dual training in humanities and psychiatry, and he writes and teaches at the interface of medicine, humanities, cultural studies, and disability studies. Lewis is the author of Moving Beyond Prozac, DSM,l#)