A Cure for Darkness: The story of depression and how we treat it

(Paperback)

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The definitive story of depression - from its history to its cutting-edge future - by a young scientist discovering his own very personal family history of darkness. Shine light on the darkness of the mind. When scientist Alex Riley was diagnosed with depression after years of struggling with his mental health, he set out to learn more about his family's hidden history of mental illness. What he found, from symptoms to treatments, from stories of stigma to those of hope, brought even more questions- why and how are these the treatments available, what have they done for us, and what might the future hold for sufferers of this ubiquitous disease In A Cure for Darkness, a very personal history of depression, he seeks the answers to these vital questions about the inner workings of our minds. From the ancient Greeks to Freud, and from therapy rooms to the Prozac revolution, A Cure for Darkness takes us on a compelling journey packed with fascinating stories and deep insight. Leading us to new frontiers in deep brain stimulation and psychedelics, it also offers us extraordinary hope for the future of the illness.

Author Bio

Alex Riley is an award-winning science writer and the author of A Cure for Darkness- The Story of Depression and How We Treat It, his first book. He received a best feature award at the 2019 Association of British Science Writers Awards for his reporting on The Friendship Bench, a project that began in Zimbabwe in 2006 and has since provided mental health care to thousands of people in New York. Since leaving academia in 2015, he began writing popular science articles for magazines such as New Scientist, PBS's NOVA Next, BBC Future, Mosaic Science, Aeon, and Nautilus Magazine. He lives in Bristol.