description: Not too long ago depression was explained to us almost entirely in psychological terms, while today experts seem to regard it as mainly a physical disease--a consequence of disturbed brain chemistry and subject to treatment by pill or capsule like any other disease. Bio-psycho-social influences are recognized, but these days the accent is definitely on the bio. Sometimes that emphasis on biology is warranted, but usually an intricate interweaving of forces is operative in all stages of depressive disorder. Depression is a personal and individual matter in which moral, esthetic, ideological, cultural and spiritual forces also play their part, and so too are all those mysterious human factors that fall outside the purview of what we are accustomed to call science. Indeed, the need to seem scientific has interfered with our achieving a genuinely integrated comprehension of depression and other mental-emotional disorders. This unusual book presents the stories of seven mourners--strugglers with varieties of depression--sufferers from the malady and maladies of our time. The main goal is to illustrate the complex interweaving of biological and psychological factors with personality, character, life circumstance, and with forces--such as love and courage and generosity and beauty--that, unless reduced and explained away in psychological terms, are usually neglected in the psychological and psychiatric literature. The people in these stories are composites of real people, the details of whose lives have been altered. None of these mourners is a therapeutic being. Each, in Walker Percy's terms, is a "sovereign wanderer, lordly exile, worker and waiter and watcher."
language: English
title: Seven Mourners: Depression and the Needs of Human Nature
titlecomplete: Seven Mourners: Depression and the Needs of Human Nature
publisher: Kroshka Books