Depression and globalization: the politics of mental health in the 21st century

By Carl

Walker

http://books.google.ca/books?id=jjPn8w1Yop8C&rview=1&source=gbs_navlinks_s

The New Right and the 1980s

Definitions and Debates

The Structures of Society and Depression

The Mental Health Sciences and the Depression Industry	158

Depression and the Future	182

Index

Malignant Sadness: the anatomy of depression:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=4650OUEfdy8C&dq=melancholy+subject:"Psychology+/+Depression"&lr=&ei=MorUStzQG4S4NeX2_KsO&rview=1

Depression is to sadness what cancer is to normal cell division, says Wolpert, a British biologist. Hence "malignant sadness," or depression, is sadness gone out of control. Unfortunately, this primer on depression for sufferers and those who care about them is for the most part as dry and clinical as a medical textbook. After an all-too-brief and moving description of his own experience with "malignant sadness," Wolpert takes a brief walk through medicine's knowledge of depression, then embarks on a detailed discussion of how depression is defined in the psychiatric handbook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In two provocative chapters, Wolpert discusses whether depression is a malady specific to the West, or whether it is found in all societies around the world (in general, his answer is that it exists in non-Western cultures but that there it tends to be expressed in physical rather than emotional symptoms). In a very thorough but dull chapter on who is susceptible to depression, he rattles off the results of study after study with little examination; some of the findings are familiar (women are more susceptible to depression than men, depression is to a large extent hereditary), others less so (postpartum depression has been found in cultures as different as Malaysia, Japan and Brazil). Wolpert does a thorough job of presenting all the important topics, from the biological roots of depression to its various treatments and their effectiveness, but much of this material is covered with m

ore grace and warmth by Peter Kramer in Listening to Prozac and in Peter Whybrow's A Mood Apart. Agent, Anne Engel. (Mar.)

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Observations on madness and melancholy
Classics in psychiatry

(LOOKS LAME AND BORING BUT MIGHT BE GOOD TO CITE)

http://books.google.ca/books?id=BhSDa3lKlscC&dq=melancholy+subject:"Psychology+/+Depression"&lr=&rview=1&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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Just interesting not necessarily really relevant:

The Color of Melancholy

Book overview
In the fourteenth century, French writers saw themselves in the winter of literature, a time for retreat into reflection. They were beset by wars, plague, famine, and social unrest. In the midst of their troubles they made an important discovery: books.
In The Color of Melancholy, Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet explores the subject of books and literate culture during the period in which vernacular literature began to displace Latin as the medium of intellectual discourse. Under the patronage of Charles V, large numbers of Latin texts were translated into French, opening up new contemplations of history, memory, and memorial. The literary heritage of the past was again available and, at the same time, the language of the day was approved not merely as a means of transmission but also for the expression of new ideas, new events, and even the self.
" The Color of Melancholy is a remarkable book, both for its impressive erudition and the rich and original insights it offers into the literary history of the fourteenth century. The book focuses its analysis on a unique and important period in the history of French medieval thought, a period in which we can witness, thanks in large part to the subtle and eloquent text of Cerquiglini, the solidification of the book as a privileged object for the medieval writers and poets, an object that inherits some of its qualities from the earlier devotion to learning in general. It is an original and most needed contribution to the resurgent medieval studies and will prove indispensable for any scholar or student of the medieval period." -- Milad Doueihi, The Johns Hopkins University
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This one looks REALLY interesting - also by a Canadian - see p. 15 "Melancholy Loss" in which she asks "what actually qualifies postmodernism as melancholia?"
The aesthetics of disengagement: contemporary art and depression
By Christine Ross
http://books.google.ca/books?id=adzY36wK63UC&pg=PA32&dq=melancholy+subject:"Psychology+/+Depression"&lr=&ei=MorUStzQG4S4NeX2_KsO&rview=1#v=onepage&q=melancholy%20subject%3A%22Psychology%20%2F%20Depression%22&f=false
p. 20-21. Freud's definition of melancholia is the inability to grieve the loss of a loved object whose loss, however, can never be clearly identified.
(...) empty world (...) narcissisitic identificaiton with the lost object....
Kristeva gives a Lacanian reading of Freud's formulation: defining melancholia as a form of disenchantment that resonates with old personal traumas that the depressed has not been able to grieve.
a love-hate relationship underlying the Freudian understanding of melancholia.
Pensky (23) - the self-lacerating longing for the pre-linguistic Thing; obsessive-repeittive, necessary and impossible search for the metalinguistic in language, the unpossessible in desire, meaning beyond any signification.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, more than half of the world's population will have a depressive disorder at some point in their lifetimes. In The Aesthetics of Disengagement Christine Ross shows how contemporary art is a powerful yet largely unacknowledged player in the articulation of depression in Western culture, both adopting and challenging scientific definitions of the condition. Ross explores the ways in which contemporary art performs the detached aesthetics of depression, exposing the viewer's loss of connection and ultimately redefining the function of the image. Ross examines the works of Ugo Rondinone, Rosemarie Trockel, Ken Lum, John Pilson, Liza May Post, Vanessa Beecroft, and Douglas Gordon, articulating how their art conveys depression's subjectivity and addresses a depressed spectator whose memory and perceptual faculties are impaired. Drawing from the fields of psychoanalysis as well as psychiatry, Ross demonstrates the ways in which a body of art appropriates a symptomatic language of depression to enact disengagement - marked by withdrawl, radical protection of the self from the other, distancing signals, isolation, communication ruptures, and perceptual insufficiency.
Most important, Ross reveals the ways in which art transforms disengagement into a visual strategy of disclosure, a means of reaching the viewer, and how in this way contemporary art puts forth a new understanding of depression.

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Don't forget to cite this guy: Schmidt

Melancholy and the care of the soul: religion, moral philosophy and madness in early modern

Ancient Moral Philosophy	19

Melancholy among the Passions in Seventeenthcentury Thought	27

The Pastoral Care of Melancholy in Calvinist England	47

Anglicanism Melancholy and the Restoration Critique

The Puritan Tradition? Nonconformist Practical Divinity

103

Morality Politics and Religion

163

Conclusion

Jeremy Schmidt reminds us that melancholy and depression have rarely been mere disorders of the body or the mind, that they affect the whole person and display moral, religious, cultural and social dimensions. Through a study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English writers, including physicians such as Thomas Willis and George Cheyne, Anglicans such as Simon Patrick, and nonconformists such as Richard Baxter, he helpfully focuses our attention upon the religious and moral dimensions of souls in anguish. It was only later that an exclusively medical language suppressed the languages of consolation. He suggests that priests and philosophers need to be brought back into the care of the melancholy.H. C. Erik Midelfort, Professor of History and Religious Studies, University of Virginia "Melancholy and the Care of the Soul is an original and important reassessment of madness and religion in early modern England. Jeremy Schmidt gracefully elucidates the intertwining of medicine, religion, and moral philosophy in the creation of the melancholic individual, whose "disease of the soul" was a product of the wider cultural crisis of the seventeenth century. Highly recommended." Anita Guerrini University of California, Santa BarbaraMelancholy is rightly taken to be a central topic and concern of early modern culture, and it continues to generate scholarly interest among historians of medicine, literature, psychiatry, and religion. This book considerably furthers our understanding of the issue by examining the extensive discussions of the treatment of melancholy provided in seventeenth and eighteenth century religious and moral philosophical publications, many of which have received only scant attention from modern scholars.Arguing that melancholy was considered by many early modern writers to be as much a disease of the mind as a condition which originated in some physiological disturbance, Dr Schmidt reveals how religious consolation and spiritual confession were employed as important elements of the treatment. This underlines a common contemporary view that mental illness was regarded as in some way related to a sinful condition, rather than a guiltless medical problem. The book also explores ways in which the language used to express and treat melancholy shaped the experience of melancholy and its behavioural manifestations, suggesting that the use of religious languages to treat the condition could enable the sufferer to conceive of themselves as struggling with the kinds of moral and spiritual problems that beset their contemporaries.As a study in intellectual history, Melancholy and the Care of the Soul offers new insights into early modern texts on melancholy, including dramatic and literary representations of melancholy and melancholic suffering, and critically engages with a broad range of current scholarship dealing with early modern medical, religious and cultural issues.Contents: Introduction: Melancholy, language, and madness; Therapeutic languages: ancient moral philosophy and patristic Christianity; Melancholy among the passions in 17th-century thought; The pastoral care of melancholy in Calvinist England; Anglicanism, melancholy and the Restoration critique of 'enthusiasm'; The 'Puritan tradition'? Nonconformist practical divinity and the critique of 'enthusiasm'; From religious despair to hypochondria: the languages of melancholy transformed; Curing Augustan hysterics: morality, politics and religion; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.About the Author: Jeremy Schmidt is Teaching Fellow at the University of King's College, Canada.

http://books.google.ca/books?id=XcD-iF6lXhMC&dq=melancholy+subject:"Psychology+/+Depression"&lr=&rview=1&source=gbs_navlinks_s

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THE LOSS OF SADNESS

The Concept of Depression
3
The Anatomy of Normal Sadness
27
Depression From Ancient Times Through the Nineteenth Century 5 3
53
Depression in the Twentieth Century
72
Depression in the DSMIV
104
Importing Pathology Into the Community
123
The Surveillance of Sadness
144
The DSM and Biological Research About Depression
The Rise of Antidepressant Drug Treatments
179
The Failure of the Social Sciences to Distinguish Sadness From Depressive Disorder
194
Conclusion

Depression has become the single most commonly treated mental disorder, amid claims that one out of ten Americans suffer from this disorder every year and 25% succumb at some point in their lives. Warnings that depressive disorder is a leading cause of worldwide disability have been accompanied by a massive upsurge in the consumption of antidepressant medication, widespread screening for depression in clinics and schools, and a push to diagnose depression early, on the basis of just a few symptoms, in order to prevent more severe conditions from developing.
In The Loss of Sadness, Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield argue that, while depressive disorder certainly exists and can be a devastating condition warranting medical attention, the apparent epidemic in fact reflects the way the psychiatric profession has understood and reclassified normal human sadness as largely an abnormal experience. With the 1980 publication of the landmark third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III), mental health professionals began diagnosing depression based on symptoms--such as depressed mood, loss of appetite, and fatigue--that lasted for at least two weeks. This system is fundamentally flawed, the authors maintain, because it fails to take into account the context in which the symptoms occur. They stress the importance of distinguishing between abnormal reactions due to internal dysfunction and normal sadness brought on by external circumstances. Under the current DSM classification system, however, this distinction is impossible to make, so the expected emotional distress caused by upsetting events-for example, the loss of a job or the end of a relationship- could lead to a mistaken diagnosis of depressive disorder. Indeed, it is this very mistake that lies at the root of the presumed epidemic of major depression in our midst.
In telling the story behind this phenomenon, the authors draw on the 2,500-year history of writing about depression, including studies in both the medical and social sciences, to demonstrate why the DSM's diagnosis is so flawed. They also explore why it has achieved almost unshakable currency despite its limitations. Framed within an evolutionary account of human health and disease, The Loss of Sadness presents a fascinating dissection of depression as both a normal and disordered human emotion and a sweeping critique of current psychiatric diagnostic practices. The result is a potent challenge to the diagnostic revolution that began almost thirty years ago in psychiatry and a provocative analysis of one of the most significant mental health issues today.

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