Depression: Integrating Science, Culture, and Humanities (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780415877213)

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 biomedicine--and 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.