Where the Roots Reach for Water : A Personal & Natural History of Melancholia - Hardcover

Smith, Jeffery

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0865475423 ISBN 13: 9780865475427

Publisher: North Point Pr, 1999

Synopsis

A writer's journey to psychological healing traces his decision to forgo medication for depression and pursue the roots of melancholia, a journey that leads him finally to a lasting relationship and healing with his family in Appalachia. Tour.

About this title

About the Author

Jeffery Smith was born in West Virginia and was raised just across the Ohio River in the Allegheny foothills of Monroe County, Ohio. He now lives with his wife, Lisa Werner, in the Appalachian foothills of Coshocton County, Ohio. This is his first book.

Reviews

Not only a searing account of one man's battle against chronic depression, this deftly crafted memoir is also an intriguing cultural history of melancholy. After methodically planning to drown himself, spurred by a temporary paralysis he attributes to taking three different antidepressant drugs at once, Smith decided to go off his medication cold turkey instead. He initially tried homeopathy, psychotherapy and St. John's wort (a plant believed by some to have an antidepressant effect), with mixed results. Finally, he achieved a breakthrough when a spiritual crisis freed him from narrow self-absorption and instilled a faith that helped him face down existential despair. Far from a born-again confessional, Smith's largely secular philosophical examination of depression ranges across cultures and centuries, from the ancient theory that a humoral imbalance produces a saturnine disposition to the view, shared by Pueblo Indians and the Yoruba of Nigeria, of depression as "soul loss," to the insights of evolutionary biologists and "contemporary humoralists" who believe that some individuals have an innately moody, risk-aversive temperament. Smith's personal odyssey extends from his Ohio Appalachian boyhood to Montana, where he worked as a case manager at a community mental health center, to North Carolina, where he engages in environmental activism. His conviction that depression has a spiritual dimension gives his graceful memoir wide-ranging appeal. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A provocative, poetic foray into melancholia from both a personal and historical perspective. While working as a psychiatric caseworker in Missoula, Minn., first-time author Smith is thrust into a depression that even the newest antidepressants cant alleviate. In attempting to understand his melancholia, Smith researches this mystifying condition, which continues to afflict people worldwide. Regardless of how it originates, concludes Smith, clinical depression results from biochemical changes in the brain. And half of those with one episode relapse within 18 months, while some will be plagued by depression for life. Smith is particularly effective in describing his own depression, when everyday details overwhelm him and his only company is ``Mr. Shoulder,'' who monitors his every thought and mood to the point of paralyzing him. He writes ``that my life felt distant even to me.'' Also intriguing is Smiths chronicle of societys changing views of depression. In Renaissance Europe, in Elizabethan England, and to the 19th-century Romantics in Germany and Great Britain, depressive illness was deemed a great gift. People even feigned melancholia, because it was considered an experience that deepened and enriched ones soul. With our societys emphasis on productivity, depression is regarded as an unwelcome intrusion that is costly to corporate America. The contemporary solution is a quick fix that allows expedient return to the marketplace. And its this quick chemical fix that troubles Smith. Only when he abandons medication and allows his illness to awaken him spiritually and metaphysically does he conquer his depression. Smith continues to take jobs to help others with psychological problems and brain injuries, and is critical of patients families ``who preferred the memory [of the victim when healthy] to the present reality[and whose] spouses had all filed for divorce.'' Brimming with insight and intelligence, an endearing memoir. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

"In my head some peer sat in judgment . . . Over and again he told me: You are haunted. You are hollow. You are beyond forgiveness and beyond hope." One antidepressant after another failed to relieve Smith's melancholy, and a combination left him briefly paralyzed. Considering suicide, he decided instead to find out: "Without antidepressants to vanquish it, could a person have a life with depression?" For Smith, the answer was "yes"; he found therapy, love, and religious faith; these allowed him to cope with his condition. His book tells his story eloquently but also provides information on depression: its history and myths; what generations of poets and mystics have said of it; what various sciences reveal about it. For Smith, "Melancholia addresses what it means to be human, forces us to reckon with the constraints of the human condition. And like some spiritual principle, it stands opposed to the great icons of our age: the machine, the marketplace, and the self." The book is beautifully written, though Smith's solution will not help all patients. Mary Carroll

In this, his first book, Smith interweaves a natural history of melancholia with the tale of his personal experiences with a cycle of intermittently ineffective antidepressants and his decision to seek an alternative therapy that combines homeopathy and psychotherapy. He explores the history and treatment of depression, personalizing it with references to his own experiences and to parallel landscapes of melancholia, religion, and the natural world (including his connection to diverse locations such as the Appalachian foothills, Missoula, MT, and Gillette, WY). The result is a unique perspective from which to consider depression. This fine piece of nonfiction writing is recommended for both public and academic libraries with collections on health, medicine, and a sense of place.
-ASue Samson, Univ. of Montana Lib., Missoula
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: North Point Pr
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0865475423
• ISBN 13: 9780865475427
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 292