Kramer, Peter D. - Against Depression

[oyceter]

fannishly had this sitting around, and then her therapist recced it, so, here I am.

Kramer begins the book by explaining that nearly every single talk he's given about depression and depression medication has someone in the audience raising his/her hand and asking, "Well, what about Van Gogh?" The book is mainly to dispell the gulf between medical knowledge of depression versus common perception of what depression is and why people still believe it is an essential part of the human condition and/or a contributing factor to genius.

Kramer does a very convincing job detailing why depression is indeed a disease and why it should be eradicated. He manages to go into medical details on how depression damages the brain, especially the hippocampus, how it increases the risk for heart attacks, and in general how much damage it does to the body. He also managed to scare the heck out of me! I was reading and basically decided that I needed to go find a therapist rightthissecond, because I like my brain! I want to keep it healthy! Also, hardening arteries and minor strokes and all that jazz very not good!

Anyhow, I found this very convincing, but I also don't have enough medical background or general background on depression to really be able to evaluate how well he presents current research. It seemed to be fairly balanced, and he does remark that many of the studies he cites aren't conclusive.

He does discuss several things that rung true with me though -- take with a grain of salt, of course. He mentions that with some of his patients, when they hit baseline or normal or the undepressed state, whatever it's called, they know it. They feel fully themselves again, even if they've been suffering from depression for a very long time. I remember finally hitting baseline for the first time in two years in March and how right it felt, how I had no doubts that this is how I was supposed to feel. It's that more than anything that convinced me that depression is a disease, not the way the body and mind normally operate.

Of course, all Kramer's chapters on how the depressed mind and body looks very different from a healthy body in terms of resilience and health were also very convincing! And he also mentions something that I found very interesting, that depression is basically a disease that affects the body and mind's resilience. A depressed brain repairs damaged neurons and neuron casing (glial cells) much more slowly than a healthy brain; depression similarly hardens blood vessels and makes them more susceptible to rupture and blockage, ergo the heightened risks of stroke and heart disease. Kramer correlated this cellular susceptibility to damage with the depressed person's mental and psychological lack of resilience. I can't say on a scientific level how true that is, but it personally rings true.

An end to depression, he argues, would mean a return to "normal" functioning on a cellular level, along with psychological resilience. The gist of the book seems to be that while feeling sadness and grief and pain is part of the human condition and contributes to art and such, depression occurs when the body and the mind cannot bounce back from such emotions.

Anyhow, I probably didn't need much convincing with regard to such points, but it was convincing all the same. Highly recommended.

Comments

[knullabulla.livejournal.com]

On Van Gogh: I'm willing to bet that the guy was bipolar. Cause really, it just sounds far more manic to suddenly get it in your head that "oh, if I give her my ear, than she'll REALLY like me!" I mean, when you're depressed, you generally don't consider your body parts to be the bestest gifts ever--you're depressed and you suck and your ears suck (well, not literally. You'd probably end up with a lot of ear aches if they did).

Quite right about depression making you numb. I get smacked by hormones--put me on the pill and I become downright suicidal--so I haven't seen for myself how meds help, but I do trust your judgement on the matter.