The Inflamed Mind
Description
As seen on "CBS This Morning"
Worldwide, depression will be the single biggest cause of disability in the next twenty years. But treatment for it has not changed much in the last three decades. In the world of psychiatry, time has apparently stood still...until now with Edward Bullmore's The Inflamed Mind: A Radical New Approach to Depression.
A Sunday Times (London) Top Ten Bestseller
In this game-changing book, University of Cambridge professor of psychiatry Edward Bullmore reveals the breakthrough new science on the link between depression and inflammation of the body and brain. He explains how and why we now know that mental disorders can have their root cause in the immune system, and outlines a future revolution in which treatments could be specifically targeted to break the vicious cycles of stress, inflammation, and depression.
The Inflamed Mind goes far beyond the clinic and the lab, representing a whole new way of looking at how mind, brain, and body all work together in a sometimes misguided effort to help us survive in a hostile world. It offers insights into how we could start getting to grips with depression and other mental disorders much more effectively in the future.
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CONTENTS
List of Figures ix
Preface xi
One: Daring to think differently 1
Root canal blues
Neuro-immunology and immuno-psychiatry
What does an inflamed mind look like?
The revolution will not be televised
Two: The workings of the immune system 20
Inflammation and infection
Fig 1. Immune cells
Fig 2. Inflammation
Location, location, location
Communication: the medium is the message
Fig 3. The immune system
Rapid rebuttal and learning
Auto-immunity: the flip side
Three: Hiding in plain sight 43
It's depressing being ill
The cogito, God, and the machine
Fig 4. A lady trying to explain the pineal theory of the human mind and body
A long shadow
Mrs P is not alone
A bona fide blockbuster
The Cartesian blind spot
Four: Melancholia after Descartes 69
From black bile to MDD
A cross to bear
Super-shrink
Fig 5. Freud's first draft of the ego
Dancing in the sanatorium
Fig 6. First prophet of pharmaceuticals
The golden age
Fig 7. Scenes of joy at the dawn of anti-depressants
Fig 8. The seer and the synapse
Farcical serotonin
Bereft of biomarkers
Five: How? 112
Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence
A stubborn fact
Causes must come first
The Berlin wall in the brain
Fig 9. What I was taught at medical school - and what we now know
Fig 10. Nervous reflex control of inflammation
Inflamed brains
Six: Why? 146
What could make you inflamed (and depressed)?
Flaming stressed
Causal chains and cycles
Ultimately, the answer must always be Darwin
Fig 11. Emotional faces and emotional brains
A savannah survival story
Seven: So what? 176
Medical apartheid
Fig 12. The vicious cycle of stress, inflammation and depression - and ways to break it - an artist's impression
Could it be different already?
Market failure
Beyond blockbusters: better but not bigger than Prozac
Alzheimer's disease and the yin and yang of microglia
Schizophrenia and auto-intoxication
References 221
Acknowledgements 229
Disclaimers 230
Index 231