How Everyone Became Depressed (31 page)

1 . John S. Price, “Chronic Depressive Illness,” BMJ, 1 (May 6, 1978), 1200–1201, p. 1200.
2. J. S. Schiller et al., Summary Health Statistics for U.S. Adults. National Health Interview Survey, 2010. National Center for Health Statistics. Vital Health Statistics, 10 (252), 2012, Tab. 14, p. 55.
3. Anne Olivier Bell, Ed., The Diary of Virginia Woolf (New York: Harcourt, 1982), Vol. 1, 66, 233; Vol. 3, 103; Vol. 4, 55, 181.
4. Ibid., Vol. 3, 111, 235.
5. Gordon Parker, “Melancholia,” paper given to Società Italiana di Psicopatologia, Rome, 15 Feb. 2012.
6. Diary of Virginia Woolf (New York: Harcourt, 1982), Vol. 1, 223.
7. William Sargant, “The Physical Treatments of Depression: Their Indications and Proper Use,” in E. Bereford Davies, Ed., Depression: Proceedings of the Symposium Held at Cambridge 22 to 26 September 1959 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 274–287, pp. 286–287.
8. Oswald Bumke, Landläufige Irrtümer in der Beurteilung von Geisteskranken (Wiesbaden: Bergmann, 1908), 33.
9. “Wife of Merchant Plunges to Death,” New York Times, Mar. 2, 1934, 3. 10. Rachel Gittelman-Klein, interview in 1998, in Thomas G. Ban, Ed., An Oral History of Neuropsychopharmacology: The First Fifty Years. Peer Interviews, Vol. 7 (Brentwood, TN: ACNP, 2011), 306.
11. C. A.H. Watts, “The Mild Endogenous Depression,” BMJ, 1 ( Jan. 5, 1957), 4–8, p. 7. 12. James Crichton Browne, “Clinical Lectures, III: Simple Melancholia,” BMJ, 2, (Oct. 12, 1872), 403–406, p. 403.
13. JeanDelay, L’électro-choc et la psycho-physiologie (Paris: Masson, 1946), 55. 14. Peter Berner, discussion, in Paul Kielholz, Ed., États dépressifs: Dépistage, évaluation, traitement (Berne: Huber, 1972), 205.
15. Randolph Swiller,letter, Psychiatric News, Apr. 6, 2007, 27.
16. Price, BMJ (1978), 1200.
17. “Suffering from Melancholia When He Made His Will,” New York Times, Mar. 15,
1894, 9.
18. Among the first to describe psychomotor retardation in melancholia was Georges Dumas, Les états intellectuels dans la mélancolie (Paris: Baillière, 1895),
41–66, 90.
19. Gordon Parker and Dusan HadziPavlovic, Melancholia: A Disorder of Movement and Mood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
20. George Riddoch, discussion, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 23 (1930),
886.
21. Bumke, Landl äufige Irrtümer (1908), 34–35.
22. “Doctor CutsHis Throat,” New York Times, Mar. 21, 1911, 3.
23. B. J. Carroll, F. I. R. Martin, and Brian Davies, “Resistance to Suppression by Dexamethasone of Plasma 11-OHCS Levels in Severe Depressive Illness,” BMJ,
2 (Aug. 3, 1968), 285–287. The story of hypercortisolemia, or endocrine involvement, in depression seems a bit more complicated than simple dysfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Carroll and colleagues wrote in 2011, after extensive investigation, that “There was no evidence of excessive or irregular ACTH secretion in hypercortisolemic depressed patients at baseline or in the lowfeedback condition. The classic theory of HPA axis overdrive by activated limbichypothalamic circuits was not supported.” The authors speculated that sympathetic input to the adrenal gland could be involved. B. J. Carroll et al., “Pathophysiology of Hypercortisolism in Depression: Pituitary and Adrenal Responses to Low Glucocorticoid Feedback,” Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica (2011), 1–14; DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-0447.2011.01821.x. Quotes from p. 1.
24. D. S. Goodin and M. J. Arminoff, “Does the Interictal EEG Have a Role in the Diagnosis of Epilepsy?” Lancet, 1 (1984), 837–839.
25. Edward Shorter and Max Fink, Endocrine Psychiatry: Solving the Riddle of Melancholia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).
26. On the DST today see Frederick Cassidy et al., “Dexamethasone Metabolism in Dexamethasone Suppression Test Suppressors and Nonsuppressors,” Biological Psychiatry, 47 (2000), 677–680.
27. “Two Women Tell of Mrs. Rankine’s Melancholia as Police Drag River for Her Body,” New York Times, Apr. 7, 1921, 1.
28. New York Times, Aug. 14, 1884, 8. I am grateful to Ellen Tulchinsky for undertaking a computer search of the electronic database of The New York Times. 29. New York Times, Aug. 24, 1951, 22.
30. Robert Latham et al., Eds., The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Vol. 6 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 246.
31. See Stanley W Jackson, Melancholia and Depression: From Hippocratic Times to Modern Times (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). Jackson stopped this admirable study just as he reached the nineteenth century; see further studies, Georges Minois, Histoire du mal de vivre: de la mélancolie à la dépression. (Paris: Editions de la Martini ère, 2003); Hé l ène Prigent, Mélancolie, les métamorphoses de la dépression (Paris, Gallimard, 2005).
32. Ian Johnston, Ed., Galen on Diseases and Symptoms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
33. Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium Maleficarum (1608) (reprinted London: Rodker, 1929), 170–171. He mentions the differential diagnosis of melancholia from demonic possession on p. 167.
34. [Margaret Cavendish] the Lady Marchioness of Newcastle, “A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding and Life” (1656), in Edward Jenkins, Ed., The Cavalier and His Lady: Selections from the Works of the First Duke and Duchess of Newcastle (London: Macmillan, 1872), 31f, 60, 70.
35. William N. Free, William Cowper (New York: Twayne, 1970), 35–41. 36. John D. Baird et al., Eds., The Poems of William Cowper, Vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), 62; The poem dates from 1757.
37. SiegfriedScheibe, Ed., Goethe: Aus meinem Leben: Dichtung und Wahrheit(Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1970), 478.
38. ThéoduleArmand Ribot, La Psychologie des sentiments (Paris: Alcan, 1896), 53. 39. Karl Jaspers, Allgemeine Psychopathologie (Berlin: Sprinter, 1913), 67. 40. Donald F. Klein, “Endogenomorphic Depression,” Archives of General Psychiatry,31 (1974), 447–454. In 1959 Leo Alexander and Austin Berkeley had a go at reviving it using a pharmacological torch, yet their ideas were not widely taken up. “The Inert Psychasthenic Reaction (Anhedonia) as Differentiated from Classic Depression and Its Response to Iproniazid,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 80 (1959), 669–679.
41. Philip Snaith, “Anhedonia: Exclusion from the Pleasure Dome,” BMJ, 305 ( July 18,
1992), 134.
42. Fanny Burney Letters, Vol. 11, 231.
43. P. Grof, J. Angst, and T. Haines, “The Clinical Course of Depression: Practical Issues,” in Jules Angst, Ed., Classification and Prediction of Outcome of Depression (Stuttgart: Schattauer, 1974), 141–148, p. 144; the symposium took place in
1973.
44. Landon Carter Gray, “Three Diagnostic Signs of Melancholia,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 17 (1890), 1–9, p. 8.
45. The Yates case is briefly discussed in Conrad M. Swartz and Edward Shorter, Psychotic Depression (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1–2. 46. Maurice Dide and Paul Guiraud, Psychiatrie du médecin praticien (Paris: Masson,
1922), 127.
47. Ga ë tan Gatian de Cl érambault, “L’homicide altruiste chez les m é lancoliques,” Bulletin de la Société Clinique de Médecine Mentale, 9 (1921), 83–92, pp. 83–84. 48. “Leila Herbert a Suicide,” New York Times, Dec. 22, 1897, 1.
49. Monica Langley,“After Long Battle, A Wall Street Star Loses to Depression,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 17, 2006, A1.
50. Kenneth R. Conner, “A Call for Research on Planned vs. Unplanned Suicidal Behavior,” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 34 (2004), 89–98. “Planned acts are associated with greater depression, hopelessness, and lethality” (p. 89). 51. JohnScott Price, “Chronic Depressive Illness,” BMJ, 1 (May 6, 1978), 1200–1201, p.
1201.
52. Holloway Sanatorium, case no. 380, closed women’s service. Centre for Contemporary Medical Archives, Wellcome ms 5157.
53. Ibid., case no. 392.
54. Jane Hillyer, Reluctantly Told (1926) (New York: Macmillan, 1935), 42–44. 55. HollowaySanatorium, case no. 421.
56. Günther Goldschmidt, editor and translator, Felix Platter Observationes: Krankheitsbeobachtungen (Vol. 1, 1602) (Berne: Huber, 1963), 72.
57. James Sims, “Pathological Remarks upon Various Kinds of Alienation of Mind,” Memoirs of the Medical Society of London, 5 (1799), 372–406, pp. 378–381. 58. Leo Hollister, in discussion, Earl Usdin et al., Eds., Neuroregulators and Psychiatric Disorders (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 555–556.
59. John Ferriar, Medical Histories and Reflections, Vol. 2 (London: Cadell, 1819),
115–116.
60. Etienne Esquirol, “De la lypémanie ou m é lancolie” (1820), reprinted in Esquirol, Ed., Des maladies mentales, Vol. 1 (Paris: Bailli ère, 1838), 398–481, see p. 406. 61. Joseph Guislain, Leçons orales sur les phrénopathies, Vol. 1 (Ghent: Hebbelynck, 1852), 103, 106.
62. Wilhelm Griesinger, Die Pathologie und Therapie der psychischen Krankheiten (Stuttgart: Krabbe, 1845), 40, 151–152. Griesinger does not use the term Einheitspsychose, although that is the sense of his views; nor does Heinrich Neumann, also often credited with coining the term, using instead the word “Irresein.” Heinrich Neumann, Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie (Erlangen: Enke, 1859), 167. The originator of Einheitspsychose as a term has eluded the present author. On the inevitable progression from one of the primary disturbances [melancholia, mania or delusional disorder (Wahnsinn)] through total insanity (Verrrü cktheit) to terminal dementia (Bl ödsinn), see Adolph Wachsmuth, Allgemeine Pathologie der Seele (Frankfurt/M: Meidinger, 1859), 326–346.
63. Karl Kahlbaum, Die Katatonie oder das Spannungsirresein (Berlin: Hirschwald, 1874).
64. Karl Kahlbaum, Die Gruppirung der psychischen Krankheiten und die Eintheilung der Seelenstörungen (Danzig: Kafemann, 1863); the classification of illness is found at pp. 133–136.
65. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Beiträge zur Erkennung und richtigen forensischen Beurtheilung krankhafter Gemüthszustände (Erlangen: Enke, 1867), 12–13. 66. Theodor Tiling, “Ueber Dysthymia und die offenen Curanstalten,” Jahrbuch für Psychiatrie, 3 (1879), 171–186.
67. Joseph J.Schildkraut, interview,“The Catecholamine Hypothesis,” in David Healy, Ed., The Psychopharmacologists, Vol. 3 (London: Arnold, 2000), 111–134, p. 131. 68. CarlGeorg Lange, Om Periodiske Depressionstilstande (Copenhagen: Lunds Forlag, 1886); I relied on the German translation, Lange, Periodische Depressionszustände, translated from the second Danish edition (Hamburg: Voss, 1896), 7, 9, 11–12, 15, 21–22. There was also a later English translation by Johan A. Schioldann, The Lange Theory of “Periodical Depressions”: A Landmark in the History of Lithium Therapy (Adelaide: Adelaide Academic Press, 2001).
69. For convenience, the various editions of Emil Kraepelin’s Psychiatrie: Ein Lehrbuch für Studirende und Aerzte appeared as follows: 1st, 1883; 2nd, 1887; 3rd, 1889; 4th, 1893; 5th, 1896; 6th, 1899; 7th, in 2 Vols. 1903–1904; 8th, in 4 Vols., 1909–1915. Abel in Leipzig published all editions up to the fourth, after which Barth in Leipzig became the publisher. Later editions substituted “Studierende” for “Studirende.” 70. 5th ed., 578.
71. 5th ed., 561.
72. 6th ed., 359.
73. Georges L. Dreyfus, Die Melancholie: ein Zustandsbild des manisch-depressiven Irreseins ( Jena: Fischer, 1907).
74. Eliot Slater, interview, in Greg Wilkinson, Ed., Talking About Psychiatry(London: Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1993), 1–12, p. 4.
75. Kraepelin, Psychiatrie, 8th ed., Vol. 3, 1265.
76. 8th ed., Vol. 3, 1350.
77. Alfred Erich Hoche, “Die Melancholiefrage,” Zentralblatt für Nervenheilkunde und Psychiatrie, 33 (1910), 193–203, p. 193.
78. Adolf Meyer, discussion, Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 32 (1905), 114; the meeting was in 1904.
79. William Styron, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness (New York: Random House, 1990), 37.
80. Henry Yellowlees, discussion, Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, 23 (1930),
887.
81. Giovanni Mingazzini, “Die Modifikationen der klinischen Symptome, die einige Psychosen in den letzten Jahrzehnten erfahren haben,” Psychiatrisch-Neurologische Wochenschrift, 28 (Feb. 6, 1926), 68–72, p. 71.

1 . Fred MacIsaac, “Nervous Breakdown,” Collier’s, Mar. 30, 1935, 10, 33, 48, quote on p. 48.
2. “Police Head IsSuicide,” New York Times, Nov. 6, 1949, 29.
3. John E. Eichenlaub, “Joe’s Nervous Breakdown,” Today’s Health, Nov. 1954, 18–19, p. 18.
4. There were a few exceptions to this rule. For an example of physicians using the term “nervous breakdown” in a professional publication, see Jurgen Ruesch et al., “The Acute Nervous Breakdown,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 8 (1963), 197–207; yet as far as we can tell, these clinicians in the department of psychiatry of the San Francisco campus of the University of California School of Medicine, and the affiliated Langley Porter Neuropsychiatric Institute, did not enter the term in patients’ charts but rather used it as a synonym for “acute illness.” The article is a virtual singleton in the medical literature.
5. Thomas A. Ross, The Common Neuroses: Their Treatment by Psychotherapy(1923), 2nd ed. (London: Arnold 1937), 86.
6. Jacob Markowitz, “Nervousness and Nervous Breakdown,” Canadian Forum, 16 (Apr. 1936), 13–17, p. 13.
7. See EdwardShorter, Partnership for Excellence: Medicine at the University of Toronto and Academic Hospitals (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013).
8. Samuel Henry Kraines, The Therapy of the Neuroses and Psychoses, 2nd ed. (London: Kimpton, 1943), 503.
9. Etienne Esquirol, “De la folie” (1816), reprinted in Esquirol, Des maladies mentales, Vol. 1 (Paris: Bailli ère, 1838), 81.
10. B én édict AugustinMorel, Traité des maladies mentales (Paris: Masson, 1860), 774. 11. See, for example, Jean-MartinCharcot, Leçons du mardi à la Salpêtrière, Policlinique, 1888–1889 (Paris: Lecrosnier, 1889), 271–276; “la dormeuse.”
12. Maurice Dide and Paul Guiraud, Psychiatrie Clinique (Paris: Librairie Le Fran ç ois, 1956), 91.
13. Megan Barke, Rebecca Fribush, and Peter N. Stearns attribute somewhat more importance to the concept in medicine, while admitting it never became an official diagnosis, “Nervous Breakdown in 20th-Century American Culture,” Journal of Social History, 33 (2000), 565–584.
14. Ella Adelia Fletcher, The Woman Beautiful (New York: Brentano’s, 1900), 527. 15. J. J. Putnam, “The Nervous Breakdown,” Good Housekeeping, 49 (Nov. 1909), 595–598.
16. “Why the Jew is too neurotic,” Current Opinion, 65 (Sep. 1918), 173–174. 17. New York Times, June 19, 1905, 1. Ellen Tulchinsky conducted the computer search on which this tabulation is based.
18. New York Times, Aug. 11, 1961, 2.
19. New York Times, May 14, 1909, 7.
20. New York Times, Feb. 16, 1941, 43.
21. New York Times, Jan. 3, 1947, 8.
22. Julian Huxley, Memories (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970), 97.
23. Peter M. Braunwarth et al., Eds., Arthur Schnitzler Tagebuch, Vol. 7, 1920–1922 (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1981), 70–73, 108.
24. Edmund Wilson, Ed., F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up (New York: New Directions, 1945), 71–72, 75, 80–81. Karl Jaspers, Allgemeine Psychopathologie (Berlin: Springer, 1913), 67.
25. Katharine Bement Davis, Factors in the Sex Life of Twenty-Two Hundred Women (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1929), 214.
26. See EdwardShorter, A History of Psychiatry from the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997), 113–144.
27. T. Seymour Tuke, “The Modern Treatment of the Insane,” BMJ, 2 (Oct. 26, 1901), 1249–1251, p. 1250.
28. Adfor La Soldanelle, Schweizerisches Medizinisches Jahrbuch 1940 (Basel: Schwabe, 1940), 327.
29. Margaret Case Harriman, “Are You Walking Around With a Nervous Breakdown?” Ladies Home Journal, 58 (1941), 16–17, quote p. 17.
30. Ralph Swindle, Jr., et al. “Responses to Nervous Breakdowns in America Over a 40-Year Period,” American Psychologist, 55 (2000), 740–749, p. 744. 31. Lisa J. Rapport et al., “The Diagnostic Meaning of ‘Nervous Breakdown’ Among Lay Populations,” Journal of Personality Assessment, 7 (1998), 242–252, p. 244. 32. “The Truth about Nervous Breakdowns,” Good Housekeeping, 150 (1960), 151.