Books : Mood Disorders
Mood Disorders : Toward a New Psychobiology
Peter C. Whybrow, M.D.
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Hagop S. Akiskal, M.D.
University of Tennessee College of Medicine
Memphis, Tennessee
William T. McKinney, Jr., M.D.
University of Wisconsin School of Medicine
The authors of this outstanding new text present a conceptually integrated approach to mood disorders developed through insights and evidence from psychodynamic, biological, and behavioral perspectives. In this strikingly original synthesis of current knowledge of affective illness, these three perspectives are reviewed within a historical context and carefully woven together. Current explanatory models of mood disorders are also examined. Specific topics covered include issues of classification and diagnosis; the contributions of Freud, Kraepelin, and Meyer; the importance of attachment and the experience of grief; the interface between neurochemical and neuroendocrine mechanisms; neuropsychopharmacology and biogenic amine metabolism; the role of receptor sensitivity in affective illness; the pitfall of the Cartesian mind-body dualism; and the modulating influence of family history, sex, and age, on mood disorders. A special chapter is devoted to the natural laws that govern the interaction of living organisms with their environment, including a section on chronobiology, and those elements of illness that can only be understood within the dimension of time. The authors conclude by considering the implications of a psychobiologic approach to practice, training, and research in the mental sciences.
An original thesis, and one that can serve as a generic paradigm for other psychiatric syndromes, Mood Disorders reviews information and ideas that will be of interest to a broad range of students and practitioners in psychiatry, psychology, social science, and neuroscience.
Cover illustration: Albrecht Durer. Melancholia (1514)