Product Description

This work digs deep and painfully into personal experience of depression and mental illness, while also considering the wider picture: the historical, social, biological, pharmaceutical and medical aspects and implications of the disease. Having experienced what he is writing about firsthand, Solomon describes the experience from the inside. He has also researched every aspect of depression, including: the historical treatment and study of "melancholy" as far back as the Greeks and Romans (who believed that cauliflower was good for depression), and through to the side effects of the pharmaceutical cocktails of the present day; case histories of people in out of mental hospitals; faith healers; the power of suggestion; and the implications for the future of Western society.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24531 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 560 pages

About the Author
Cambridge-educated UK/US national in his thirties, writes for The New Yorker and other US media. He has suffered from bouts of suicidal depression. Lives in New York, and sometimes London. Author of one novel.

Customer Reviews

the best book on depression alongside Kay Jamieson's
As a novelist who has written a novel about manic depression, and suffered from the more commonplace sort, I can't recommend this book too highly. A remarkable blend of personal anecdote and meticulous, scholarly research it stands with Kay Redfield Jamieson's An Unquiet Mind as one of the great books on the subject. Solomon is never self-pitying, and though you may envy him the support given him (especially by his saintly father)this is an affliction that is so widespread and so often misdiagnosed or treated that a copy should be in every household. What is especially good is his attitude to drugs and therapy, both of which can be life-saving. A fine novelist, he has found a subject that his thoughtful, pellucid, sympathetic style shows to startling advantage.

An uncommonly good guide to a common illness
This is an excellent read for anyone interested in depression, who has had it or is currently experiencing it, is caring for someone with it, or is studying mental health professionally. Although some of the medical facts and assumptions about religion are a bit misguided, the general facts in this book are correct and well presented. To give the author his due, what is factually wrong he is usually just giving an opinion on, so it is more acceptable to the reader.
It is also a very brave book as the author is painfully honest about his experiences, and this is a rarity in self-disclosure in mental health literature. All too often people will disclose what they want to, but this is a great example of a "warts and all" book.
I highly recommend this book as one of the best, if not THE best in the genre.

The Noonday Demon
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.