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32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Noonday Demon, 27 Aug 2002
A book that has both the insides and the outsides of its covers plastered with gushing reviews must have something good about it -- and this book does. It is fantastic, and deserves all the reviewers' hyperbole.The book is the product of five years of research and 10,000 pages-worth of interviews alone. In addition, Solomon has suffered depression himself and is a novelist. The book is certainly not a subjective account of depression. (For an interesting example of that genre see Gwynneth Lewis's recent "Sunbathing in the Rain.) It contains plenty of discussions stemming from statistics, and reports on recent scientific and psychological theories. It has a chapter devoted to the role depression might have in evolution; one on depression and poverty that has a distinctly sociological slant; one chapter that covers the history of medical treatment of depression. But it also contains a wealth of testimony from people who suffer from depression themselves -- as well as Solomon's own story, which is mostly told in two of the twelve chapters. (Around 30 people's stories are given in detail, mostly in their own words.) I think this book is an excellent place to go to for someone who is interested in learning about depression -- not only about the science of it (what it does, how it can be treated, etc.) but also how it fits into people's lives: how they feel about it, how it came upon them, how they live with it. (For example, if you know someone who is depressed and can't understand why they don't just "snap out of it", or if you don't think it's serious enough to think about treatment -- or alternatively think that pills can cure them completely -- then this book may help you.) I imagine that for anyone who has suffered from it, the accuracies of this book will trigger many memories of your own depression. (That may be a reason not to read it, if you do suffer from it. Gwynneth Lewis's book, by contrast, was written with the explicit aim of cheering and encouraging.) As I have been depressed, it was, I admit, sometimes a hard read: it is painful to be reminded of my unhappiness. But even so, I felt that the book has informed me. I knew that millions of Americans take Prozac, but I wasn't aware that depression can be classed as the second-biggest global health problem after hearth-disease. It changed some of my attitudes too, particularly my resistance to taking medication, which I now think was exaggeratedly fearful, and convinced me of the need to seek help of one sort or another for depression.
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