Obesity appears to be associated with an increased risk of depression, and depression also appears associated with an increased risk of developing obesity, according to a meta-analysis of previously published studies in the March issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. [continue reading…]
Depression
In the current issue of The New Yorker, Louis Menand examines a crop of new books about depression. Here Menand talks with Blake Eskin about why no one can agree on what depression is or how to treat it, and about the larger moral and philosophical implications of the debate.
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Source: New Yorker
Can psychiatry be a science? New Yorker article Head Case by Louis Menand on the science and philosophy of depression.
You arrive for work and someone informs you that you have until five o’clock to clean out your office. You have been laid off. At first, your family is brave and supportive, and although you’re in shock, you convince yourself that you were ready for something new. Then you start waking up at 3 A.M., apparently in order to stare at the ceiling. You can’t stop picturing the face of the employee who was deputized to give you the bad news. He does not look like George Clooney. You have fantasies of terrible things happening to him, to your boss, to George Clooney. You find—a novel recognition—not only that you have no sex drive but that you don’t care. You react irritably when friends advise you to let go and move on. After a week, you have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. After two weeks, you have a hard time getting out of the house. You go see a doctor. The doctor hears your story and prescribes an antidepressant. Do you take it? Link to read more
Source: New Yorker
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Astudy in the March edition of the American Journal of Psychiatry senior-authored by Jerome C. Wakefield, a professor at the Silver School of Social Work at New York University with Mark Schmitz of Temple University and Judith Baer of Rutgers University, empirically challenges the effectiveness of psychiatrists’ official diagnostic manual in preventing mistaken, false-positive diagnoses of depression.
The findings concerning the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ (DSM) criteria for diagnosing depression rebuts recent criticism of earlier research by Wakefield. That earlier research suggested that misdiagnoses of depression are widespread, and touched off considerable controversy.
