A fascinating look at a debilitating malady and the new wave of thinking and treatments.
A leader in the field explains how the nightmare of depression is slowly being overcome.
Gold, who has worked at the National Institutes of Health since the mid-1970s, is an acclaimed expert in the treatment of depressive disorders. In this book, he looks ahead to an emerging generation of remedies. The author estimates that 15%-20% of the population suffer from depression in some form. For decades, depression was seen as an illness to be treated by psychiatric methods, but the past 20 years have seen the emphasis shift to biology. Health professionals now view depression as a neurodegenerative disease associated with the loss of tissue in key parts of the brain, resulting in chemical imbalances and synaptic failures. In particular, Gold believes that depression represents a stress response that has gone awry. Working from this premise, scientists have designed new drugs to help the brain rebuild pathways and repair damaged tissue. There is the possibility of treatments customized to the needs of different patients, and early research is promising. The author tracks the history of antidepressants, drawing on cases and clinical studies, including ones in which he was personally involved. Drugs like psilocybin and ketamine are now being used, and they have the advantage of taking effect quickly. Another area of research is targeted electrical stimulation of the brain, including repeated magnetic pulses. Researchers are also investigating the genetic aspects of depression, which might open the way for gene therapy and drugs to build resilience. Gold emphasizes that he is not against psychiatric treatment. In fact, he sees psychotherapy and biochemical therapy in combination as the most effective way to treat depression. The book could easily have become bogged down in technical jargon, but the author writes accessibly, making the book an informative, enjoyable read.
A fascinating look at a debilitating malady and the new wave of thinking and treatments.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2023
ISBN: 9781538724613
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2023
A lyrical memoir about pregnancy, mental illness, and art.
A poet and short story writer describes a pregnancy spent in Taos, New Mexico.
Novak begins her debut memoir with a list of things she wants to forget: her dog, impending motherhood, “my husband snoring beside me,” the changing shape of her body, and her “debt-pay-off plans,” among others. Instead, she focuses on the purpose of her trip to Taos, which is to research the artist Agnes Martin, who had recently become something of an obsession. A recovering anorexic and bulimic with diagnosed depression and an undiagnosed anxiety disorder, Novak is prone to flights of frightening anger that lead to violent rages that she is unable to recall after they pass. Pregnancy wreaked havoc on her vulnerabilities, disfiguring the body she spent years trying to control and tipping her into suicidal ideation that, her physician cruelly reminded her, endangered both her and her baby. “How impossible it is to be fully here—present in the present—when you’re pregnant,” she writes. “Pregnant, the present zips you between future and past.” In Taos, where she and her husband moved temporarily, Novak tried to survive her pregnancy by focusing on her research on Martin, an endeavor that morphed from a literary project into an attempt to transform into the abstract painter herself. “I was here to be like Agnes Martin, not relapse into the past,” she writes. The more she sank into Martin’s world, the more she descended into the complexity of her own bodily needs and desires as well as her deepest fears. Novak’s rhythmic prose is stunningly creative, clearly drawing on her poetic background. Structurally, though, the first third of the book drags, mostly because the author doesn’t explain the origin of her obsession with Martin or fully reveal her neurodiversity. Still, the majority of the story pulses with honesty and vulnerability, spiraling to a satisfying ending.
A lyrical memoir about pregnancy, mental illness, and art.Pub Date: July 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781646220762
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Catapult
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2023
To exorcise the demons of irrationality, turn to this rigorous—if overzealous—study of everyday logic. Cognitive illusions—like optical illusions—hold us in their thrall, says Piattelli-Palmarini (Cognitive Science/Institute San Raffaele, Milan). But theoretical breakthroughs in cognitive science provide revolutionary new avenues for thought. Addressing everyone who wants to make more rational decisions, Piattelli- Palmarini unveils the ``discovery'' of the ``cognitive unconscious.'' This term, with its nod to Freud, refers to the reflexive patterns of reasoning in which we engage unreflectively, even though counterintuitive but logically correct thinking would serve us better. Asked, for instance, which outcome is more likely in a coin flip, ``heads-heads-heads'' or ``heads-tails-heads- tails,'' most people use incorrect logic to conclude that the latter is more likely (in fact, ``the longer the sequence, the less probable it is''). Piattelli-Palmarini explores the ``tunnels'' of cognitive illusion, showing how familiar problems, (drawn from the realms of medicine, demography, economics, and gambling) flummox most people. Then he corrects common misapprehensions, mapping the rational terrain that lies outside these tunnels, even making an arcane but crucial fact about statistics clear to the general reader. By revealing how most respondents err in, for instance, guessing someone's profession based on a personality profile, Piattelli-Palmarini rigorously defines the rules of probability and deduction. Some will object that what he calls ``irrationality'' is itself a function of the abstraction of such problems, but he vigorously defends cognitive science against such arguments. Perhaps less defensible is his pretense that its ideas represent a revolutionary breakthrough; the issues he raises are, after all, part of a 2,000-year-old philosophical debate. Whether or not his grand claims are justified, as a primer for problem-solvers, this book has great merit.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-471-58126-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Wiley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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