How Everyone Became Depressed: The Rise and Fall of the Nervous Breakdown

The book argues that the diagnosis of depression has been bent greatly out of shape through misuse and needs to be replaced by other concepts that correspond more closely to what people actually experience. The sturdy term "nerves" from the past is a ready candidate, and "nervous breakdown" is still meaningful to many people. Drawing upon two centuries of psychiatry's past, the book is written to be accessible to the general public and convincing to specialist readers. No other book in this field has such scope, nor such a deeply learned ability to use the past in service of the present.

Edward Shorter is an internationally-recognized historian of psychiatry and the author of numerous books, including A History of Psychiatry from the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac (1997) and Before Prozac (2009). Shorter is the Jason A. Hannah Professor in the History of Medicine and a Professor of Psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto.