Review: Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease
Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease (2010) by Gary Greenberg. Published by Simon and Schuster. This book presents a combination of research and Dr. Greenberg’s personal experience with depression. He takes a position critical of today’s prevailing view that depression is a brain disorder caused by a neurochemical imbalance and effectively treated by antidepressant medications. He looks at the history of depression as a disorder, the history of antidepressant medication, and considers what we lose when we look at our sadness as a brain disease. Dr. Greenberg’s writing is fluid and unforced, making serious material an easy read (He has written for publications such as the New Yorker, Harper’s and Discover — just to name a few). He is able to combine humor (sometimes pointed at his own foibles and sometimes at the foibles of the health-care professions and pharmaceutical industry), with serious scholarship. And his points…