Manufacturing Depression, by Gary Greenberg
An excellent account of the history of the psychiatric concept of depression. Dr. Greenberg provides a fairly unique perspective, as he is an experienced psychotherapist who has had some personal experience with depression. In his writing he draws material from both sides of the desk. He also identifies and discusses the logical fallacies inherent in the bio-psychiatric orthodoxy.
Dr. Greenberg concludes:
“Call your sorrow a disease or don’t. Take drugs or don’t. See a therapist or don’t. But whatever you do, when life drives you to your knees, which it is bound to do, which maybe it is meant to do, don’t settle for being sick in the brain. Remember that’s just a story. You can tell your own story about your discontents, and my guess is that it will be better than the one that the depression doctors have manufactured.” (p 367)
So we have another voice in the wilderness rejecting, or at last challenging, the bio-pharma-psychiatric dogmatic profit-driven simplification of the human condition.
Gary Greenberg, Simon & Schuster, 2010 |