Depression is seen by doctors and medical researchers the world over as a real illness. The World Health Organization reckons it affects 120 million people and will soon rank number two in the global disease burden. But do we really think it is just a disease? Or do we still buy into the romantic idea that creativity is somehow linked to this species of suffering?
Peter Kramer takes an uncompromising line. He is a psychiatry professor who made his name with Listening to Prozac, a book that looked at depression, but also at the then-new notion of “tweaking” personality…
