Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease
Product Description
This has been a pivotal question since America’s inception. Am I not happy enough because I am depressed? is a more recent version. In the past twenty years, as antidepressants have become staples of our medicine chests — upward of thirty million Americans are taking them at an annual cost of more than ten billion dollars — more people have begun to ask themselves if their unhappiness is a disease that can, and should, be treated by medication.
Part memoir, part intellectual history, part exposé, Manufacturing Depression reveals how this question has come to dominate our understanding of our suffering. Author Gary Greenberg draws on sources ranging from the Old Testament to current medical journals and scholarship to his twenty-five years as a psychotherapist and his own experience as a depression patient to show how the idea that depression is a widespread chronic disease has been packaged by brilliant scientists, doctors, and marketing experts — and why it is has become wildly successful in the marketplace of ideas.
Rather than asking whether or not depression is a disease, or whether or not we should take drugs to ease our pain, Greenberg asks what we gain and lose by taking this approach, and who benefits when we do. Manufacturing Depression allows readers to think of depression not just as an illness, but as a story about our suffering, its source, and its relief. A remarkably intelligent, witty, and deeply perceptive writer and professional observer, Greenberg has insights and perspective that are bound to spark much debate, and challenge many — experts and casual readers alike — to view depression in a wholly new light.
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“Manufacturing Depression” is different from any other book I have ever read on the topic. Mainly because the author Gary Greenberg has a unique insight into depression. He not only treats depressed patients in his profession as a a therapist, but he has also suffered from this disease himself.
The author provides a complex -and fascinating to read- history of depression and explains in great detail how the pharmaceutical industry managed to turn a normal aspect of life (occasional sadness) into a profitable disease that requires treatement.
Unlike other authors Greenberg isn’t completely opposed to anti-depression medication, but he acknowledges that these meds have their limitations and shouldn’t be viewed as the cure-all solution. Instead we have to realize that not every bout of the blues requires drugs and that happiness cannot be achieved by simply popping a pill.
Greenberg uses a very warm and light-hearted tone and he never comes across as preachy in his writings. I truly enjoyed reading his work and I believe, that the insights shared will be invaluable to anyone afflicted with the disease.
Rating: 5 / 5
Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease
I am a huge believer in the freedom of the individual to chose his religion or philosophy, “I claim the privilege of worshiping all mighty God according to the dictates of my own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how or what they may”.
Psychology is in my humble opinion a modern religion; you can chose it as a helpful resource or if you so believe, a singular path to the truth. Any time religion is a career, it makes me nervous.
Here’s the deal.
The author is battling a trend that makes his profession less necessary. He spends a great deal of time discrediting the ideas of Kramer’sListening to Prozac : A Psychiatrist Explores Antidepressant Drugs and the Remaking of the Selfwhich is a book that changed my life, so there you go. The author nearly claims that the only reason antidepressants work at all is placebo effect. I beg to differ. It is generally accepted that talk therapy in conjunction with anti depressants is more effective that either alone. Personally however, I don’t want someone inside my head; I’ve tried it and found it to be not effective for me. Personally for me again, modern medicine gives me the ability to get out of bed and be “highly functional” to quote a therapist I did see.
Is it likely that mood altering drugs are over prescribed? Of course it is. Is it likely that most people self medicate with alcohol, and other non prescribed drugs to the detriment of their depression? Now that is a bigger problem isn’t it.
Depending what camp you are in, you will either feel vindicated or angry at this book as counterproductive to helping what the World Health Org. says is the great plague of our times.
Rating: 2 / 5
Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease
The idea that depression has been cleverly mass-marketed by the pharmaceutical industry is not new. In fact, we know that pharma will push any of their products, for any ailment, regardless of safety and known side effects (thalidomide), and that the FDA works with pharma to make these drugs come to market at billions in profit, and at the expense of the safety of those who take the drugs. So then what really is the point of Greenberg’s book? It’s difficult to tell.
The most useful for me are facts I will take from having read this book, things I had never known before, such as how the DSM has changed over the years, the early horrifying days of various types of shock therapy, and how LSD came to be a prescription drug called Delysid.
Manufacturing Depression is no new age/philosophical treatment of the subject. It is scientifically historical, and at times as I was reading passages I wondered “What does this have to do with depression?” By the time the author finally made his point, I was tired and frustrated. For example, Greenberg takes several pages to describe how stained tissue samples lead to cell biology.
Greenberg shares his own experience with taking part in an antidpressant study, and while he is an obviously charismatic indivdual whose voice and personality leap off the page, I have to confess that none of this book came together for me, in any cohesive fashion.
Rating: 3 / 5
Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease
Many years ago, the only depression I remember hearing about is “the Great Depression”. Even though I had friends whose mothers would not budge from their beds despite not being sick, nobody ever used the word “depression” to describe their state. Even if someone was committed to a mental institution following a suicide attempt, the word “depression” was never mentioned.
Now, of course, it’s totally different. People get “depressed” because their favorite got voted off “American Idol” or “Dancing With The Stars”. One of my co-workers complain that “rainy days are depressing”. It’s just weather, it generally changes quickly, so what’s the use of getting upset about it.
Into this world where “depression” is used to describe any sort of sad feelings steps Dr Greenberg with his point of view on depression
Dr Greenberg is a psychotherapist as well as having suffered from depression himself. That gives him a unique place to formulate his opinions. Do you think you should always be happy? Is every small setback a big deal? It shouldn’t be, everybody feels sad and disappointed from time to time. After all, we are guaranteed “the pursuit of happiness”, not “happiness 24/7″.
Dr Greenberg attempts to prove his points by pulling what he (and another reviewer) called “pranks”. He would set up the situation to get the response he was seeking than he would document that he got the reaction he was seeking. That seemed a bit silly to me, sort of like the question there is no right answer to, “Have you stopped beating your wife?”. Obviously, it’s not a yes or no answer and most likely by protesting the question you would give the impression that yes, you do beat your wife.
Dr Greenberg doesn’t have good feelings for the routinely prescribed antidepressants (Prozac/Zoloft/Lexapro, etc). But he does believe that using illegal drugs such as LSD and Ecstasy does help (at least him) deal with his own emotional problems. That seems strange to me because illicit drugs have no standard to be measure against - the Ecstasy that is available to me in Baltimore is not likely to be the same chemical compound as Ecstasy available in New York or Miami - or anyplace else for that matter. I do know one person who was treated with LSD (when it was legal to do so) and he said it did really help him. But it was a controlled environment, supervised and a one shot treatment.
So I don’t know if basically Dr Greenberg is using illict drugs for self treatment or why that’s necessarily better than using a prescription drug. I also wonder if perrhaps his drug use could be related to his own depressions, but obviously I have no way of knowing that. Just something I happen to think about when I hear about the use of illegal drugs to self medicate moods.
And it seems there are more mental illnesses now than there were in the past. For instance, being shy Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness is now considered an illness. It’s not someone’s cautioned response to a new situation, you can get a drug to keep from being shy.And he never even talked about the overmedication of kids - you know, the ones with “explosive defiant disorder” which my parents would have called “being a brat”. You can get drugs to “help” people with that particular “disorder”. Companies can make a lot of money creating drugs and creating diseases that the drugs can “cure”.
I found the book very interesting. It is a bit slow to start off (in my opinion) but the pace picks up and the book becomes more enjoyable to read. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in depression or “manufactured” mental illnesses. It is a very intriguing read.
Rating: 4 / 5
Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease
Expanded from a chapter in Greenberg’s excellent 2008 book The Noble Lie, this book is a fascinating study in the way society and the medical establishment look at disease and drugs. Guaranteed to get you thinking. What is a disease? Who decides? When Nancy Reagan said “Just Say No to Drugs,” just why didn’t this include antidepressants (or aspirin)? Greenberg writes in a slightly quirky style and from time to time I had to stop and reread a sentence or even a paragraph: this is the first (and, I hope, the last) time I’ve seen the word “desolation” used as a verb (page 33). But the odd phrasings just add spice to a book which will provoke you to thought, whether or not you suffer from depression (whatever that may be).
Rating: 5 / 5
Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease