Depression is a bona fide disease that damages body organs

From USA Today:

Against Depression, in bookstores May 9, puts this topic under the lens of cutting-edge science. [Peter] Kramer, a professor at Brown University, catalyzed a debate about antidepressants 12 years ago with his best seller Listening to Prozac.

Depression is a “nature and nurture” malady, as genes make some people vulnerable to illness under stress. Kramer explains how our bodies cope with stress and how inability to cope affects the bodies of depressed people. He scorns the ideas that mood disorders are just “a heavy dose of the artistic temperament” and that optimists are intellectual lightweights.

Kramer’s key points echo “increasing evidence that depression has an impact on every body system and organ,” says cardiac researcher Nancy Frasure-Smith of the Montreal Heart Institute and McGill University. “Over time, depression prematurely ages you,” she says.

More here.