Readership: Broad audience of both specialist and non-specialist health professionals (including mental health professionals - psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, epidemiologists, social workers, sociologists), and general readers.
Allan V. Horwitz, Professor of Sociology, Rutgers University, USA, and Jerome C. Wakefield, Professor of Social Work, New York University, USA
"...one of the most important books in the field of psychiatry published in the last few years...a brilliant book with a significance well beyond its narrow but important subject." - Spectator
"This wonderful book will alter professional thinking." - Nursing Standards
"...an interesting and thought-provoking book that underscores the need to examine more fully each patient's psychological illness and the factors contributing to it...[a good book for] anyone interested in understanding depression more fully and the place normal sadness has in our society." - Doody's Notes
"...[this book] could alter the official definition of depression, change the way we get mood-enhancing drugs, and clarify how effectively our culture delivers well-being." - Reason Magazine
"Allan Horwitz and Jerome Wakefield's important book... is part of a gathering blowback against the pathologisation and medicalisation of the ordinary human condition of sadness after loss... what they do accomplish in critiquing psychiatric diagnosis of depression is important enough to make much of this book required reading for depression researchers and clinicians." - The Lancet
"...a work of deep scholarship..." - Hugh Freeman, Times Literary Supplement
1: The concept of depression 2: The anatomy of normal sadness 3: Sadness with and without cause: depression from ancient times through the nineteenth century 4: Depression in the twentieth century 5: Depression in the DSM-IV 6: Importing pathology into the community 7: The surveillance of sadness 8: The DSM and biological research about depression 9: The rise of antidepressant drug treatments 10: The failure of the social sciences to distinguish sadness from depressive disorder 11: Conclusion
