Posted by pseudoname on February 11, 2006, at 15:36:33
In reply to Kramer?, posted by Squiggles on February 1, 2006, at 17:02:47
> I never read Peter Kramer, and he is the one who wrote THE book on Prozac. Should I get it?
I was going to reply to this a few days ago, but I figured you'd already bought or not-bought it. Well, anyway, here's my thinking.
Peter Kramer's (1993) "Listening to Prozac" is really more of a very long (*slightly* verbose) philosophical essay on personal identity, not Prozac or depression. It doesn't have much clinical information on Prozac, and that would be out of date now, anyway. I don't think I would suggest to anyone on a budget to buy it, but if you're interested in that sort of thing, it's worth reading many of the chapters.
I can recommend Kramer's (2005) "Against Depression". To a certain extent, he fights a straw man in it: Who these days really thinks depression is so romantic? A likelier, more serious problem, I think, is resigning yourself to depression, thinking that you might as well put up with it.
But Kramer's summary of recent research puts the fight in you. Depression has ongoing, cumulative, long-lasting deleterious effects in the brain, in cognition, in overall physical health, and in life expectancy (apart from suicide). He spells it out: get rid of depression as thoroughly as possible. It's serious.
It's because I read "Against Depression" last fall that I went back to a pdoc again. And because of that, I eventually got a buprenorphine (Subutex) script that worked!
You do a lot of great reading in psych, Squiggles. Do you have any favorite theories or insights about it?
poster:pseudoname
thread:605252
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/books/20051228/msgs/608677.html