George Scialabba

I'd assume that most of the people who are reading/ interested in reading this book are fellow depressives. Despite what my low score might indicate, I do appreciate any thoughtful attempt to talk about life with mental illness. Scialabba manages to avoid the pit falls of sentimentality or over-simplicity in this book, and seems to possess a clear idea of the role that depression has played in his life, as well as it's multitude of sources. For that, I appreciate having read this.

That being said, I can't quite understand what made Scialabba think it was a good idea to devote the majority of this short book to an exhaustive litany of all the treatment he has received for his depression over the last 50 years, and on top of that, to call what is effectively a medical record bookended with brief reflections on depression How to be Depressed. Maybe I'm asking too much of my literature, but I'd hoped I'd finish a book on depression feeling better about my own mental health situation - instead, after slogging through one man's mostly unsuccessful, life-long struggle, I'm not exactly galvanized. This isn't to say that I need every book to be an uplifting and life-affirming, one look at the other books I've logged on this site would tell you that. But it at least needs to be entertaining. The most generous standpoint I could take on this book is that Scialabba meant the title to be taken as ironic - we have here, after all, is a life lived under the aegis of institutionalized mental health care, along with all it's cold clinical language, alien descriptions, and treatment goals that sound like something out of a quarterly corporate report. But no where else in the book are we given a clear idea why Scialabba thought it worthwhile to include this material. Look, I'm not opposed to the use of endless monotonous lists in a book. Sometimes they can be used to hypnotic effect, and to drive home the brutal mundanity of reality (Bolano's 2666 springs to mind). But typically this technique is employed in much longer works, and don't make up the majority of the book as they do here.

Depression is, in part, a narcissistic disease. The black hole inside you can make you think that all time and space is bending inward towards your internal abyss, and it's very easy to forget that your perception isn't even one fraction of a fraction of what is actually happening in the world. People and events take on outsized importance, blissfully unaware of the monstrous shadow they are casting on the screen of your mind. While is far from my prerogative to criticize a man more than twice my age, and who has faced a degree of mental illness that haven't, I wonder what role this depressive narcissism plays in this book. The best treatment I have found for my own depression has been anything that helps me, however briefly, shirk the heavy weight of suffocating identity that it drapes over your entire world. Admittedly, Scialabba does give some tidbits of advice near the end of the book, as a kind of brief nod to the book's title. These range from helpful-if-obvious (exercise, friendship) to rather bizarre; let the record show that our author suggests various nut butters and Game of Thrones as part of an effective treatment. But over two-thirds of this book is painfully restricted to the most specific experience of depression, delivered with no comment. To read it is a painful reminder of that weight of identity, and the undignified pursuit of help from the powers that be.

Writing this now, it's hard for me not to feel a little bad for criticizing this work which was clearly borne from a lifetime of suffering. But if, like me, you are interested in insight about mental health problems and practical ideas about how to survive them, world literature is littered with great books full of ideas. How to Be Depressed would perhaps stand better as a blog post or a Twitter feed.… (mer)

Scialabba is writing partly to politicize depression and its courses of treatment, with his reminders of the economic ("politics all the way down"), insurance companies' effect on the style of medical writing, and the possibility of wealth redistribution for alleviating the financial troubles plaguing low-income depressives. Maybe this emphasis is meant to counterbalance the gloomy sense of intractability found in the decades of case notes, reams manifesting an anxiety that dogs everyone — there's no lasting solution, just uneven reprieves and recurrences. Difficult not to take it too personally, no matter which side of the equation (victim or close associate) you find yourself on, so I was glad at the beginning and end to return to the political as a sort of reassurance.… (mer)