Explanations - 1: Finding a Guide
Posted by JohnD
I’d like to think of the search for the causes and treatments of depression as the tracking down of a killer, a good yarn like the fascinating medical mystery stories The New Yorker publishes from time to time. But we’re a long way from the end of such a story, and those tales can only be written in retrospect, after it’s clear the great discovery has been made, the mystery solved. It looks more and more as if there is no single discovery to answer all the questions, only multiple lines of research leading to treatments of great promise. Those treatments add to the store of useful tools, but none of them quite gets the job done. The search continues, and we try to make do with what it yields.
One of the most interesting guides to this search and the recent history of treatment strategies is Dr. Peter Kramer. He is now so well known as a result of Listening to Prozac
and his other writings and media work that it’s automatic to refer to his books in any list of helpful references. I’d like to comment on what it is in his writing that has been so important to me. It’s a continuing challenge to a lay person to sort through the vast amount of available material and get clarity about what it all means. It’s much easier to get hopelessly confused by conflicting claims and theories. I look for people I can trust for help, and Kramer is someone whose writing inspires that trust.
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