Breaking Through Depression

'Compassionate and wide-ranging' The Times 'Masterful . . . distils extensive clinical experience, personal insights, and the scientific achievements of a professional lifetime, to offer a lucid analysis of what it will take to understand, treat, and ultimately defeat what is todays "cancer of the self"' Peter Whybrow, Founding Member and Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists We are often told that depression is 'all in the mind'. So why are so many of its symptoms felt in our bodies? Why can depression have such a profound impact on physical as well as mental health - from coronary disease to stroke? Philip Gold, a world-renowned expert on this devastating illness, shows how depression is a stress response gone awry, affecting the whole body, not just the brain. Drawing on both neuroscience and endocrinology, Breaking Through Depression reveals the latest research on how depression influences every aspect of our health, from the chemical messengers that control appetite to the brain's structure and functionality. Packed with startling insights - such as how depression disrupts the twenty-four-hour sleep-wake cycle, interacting with the stress system differently depending on whether someone experiences melancholic or atypical symptoms - this book gives us the fullest picture yet of the disease. Gold transforms our understanding of different forms of depression, including related conditions such as bipolar and seasonal affective disorders, and its huge impact on global health. Timely, urgent and important, Breaking Through Depression articulates the workings of this misunderstood illness in compelling and often surprising detail, introducing the newest innovations in treatment - from low energy lasers to genetic solutions and rapidly acting antidepressants which restore damaged brain cells - that offer hope for healing.