Overview
- Offers much-needed historical perspectives on the emergence of modern depressive illness
- Explores how melancholia was transformed in the nineteenth century from melancholy ‘madness’ to a modern biomedical mood disorder
- Draws on a range of sources, including asylum records, medical textbooks and articles, statistical reports, and directives from the British Lunacy Commission
- This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access
Part of the book series: Mental Health in Historical Perspective (MHHP)
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Table of contents (7 chapters)
Reviews
“A thought-provoking read, the book draws on a range of sources, including medical and psychiatric textbooks, lunacy commission records, asylum records, and journal articles, to demonstrate how melancholia was made into a modern biomedical mood disorder. … Jansson's work provides a timely, fresh, and important contribution to the history of psychiatry and mental health more broadly.” (Lynsey Cullen, H-Net Reviews, h-net.org, July, 2021)
“At a time when the prevalence of mood disorders and antidepressant consumption are at an all-time high, the need for a comprehensive historical understanding of how modern depressive illness came into being has never been more urgent. This book addresses a significant gap in existing scholarly literature on melancholia, depression, and mood disorders by offering a contextualised and critical perspective on the history of melancholia in the first decades of psychiatry, from the 1830s until the turn of the twentieth century.” (Filippo M. Sposini, H-Madness, historypsychiatry.com, March 31, 2021)
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Bibliographic Information
Book Title: From Melancholia to Depression
Book Subtitle: Disordered Mood in Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry
Authors: Åsa Jansson
Series Title: Mental Health in Historical Perspective
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54802-5
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-54801-8Published: 22 September 2020
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-54804-9Published: 23 September 2021
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-54802-5Published: 21 September 2020
Series ISSN: 2634-6036
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6044
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XV, 234
Topics: Social History, History of Medicine, Psychiatry, History of Britain and Ireland