Depression has become the most frequently diagnosed chronic mental illness, and is a disability encountered almost daily by mental health professionals of all trades. "Major Depression" is a medical disease, which some would argue has reached epidemic proportions in contemporary society, and it affects our bodies and brains just like any other disease. Why, this book asks, has the incidence of depression been on such an increase in the last 50 years, if our basic biology hasn't changed as rapidly? To find answers, Dr. Blazer looks at the social forces, cultural and environmental upheavals, and other external, group factors that have undergone significant change. In so doing, the author revives the tenets of social psychiatry, the process of looking at social trends, environmental factors, and correlations among groups in efforts to understand psychiatric disorders.

Dan G. Blazer, M.D., Ph.D., is J.P. Gibbons Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Professor of Community and Family Medicine, Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. Blazer is also an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina. A Past President of the American Geriatrics Society, Dr. Blazer is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, and is the author of 26 books and almost 300 peer-reviewed articles.

Preface Part I: The Diagnosis of Depression. Introduction. The Birth and Growth of Major Depression. The Rise and Fall of Depression as a Reaction. Part II: Social Psychiatry. The Birth and Growth of Social Psychiatry. The Retreat of Social Psychiatry. Part III: The Frequency of Depression and a Lesson from War and Society. Interpreting the Burden. A Lesson From War Syndromes. Things Fall Apart: Society and Depression on the Threshold of the 21st Century. Part IV: The Revival of Social Psychiatry. A Call for Basic Social Science Research in Psychiatry. Emotion: A Link Between Body and Society. The Problem with Soma