From Melancholia to Depression Disordered Mood in Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry /

• Main Author: Jansson, Åsa (Author)
• Corporate Author: SpringerLink (Online service)
• Format: Electronic eBook
• Language: English
• Published: Cham : Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.
• Edition: 1st ed. 2021.
• Series: Mental Health in Historical Perspective,
• Subjects: Social history.; Medicine > History.; Psychiatry.; Great Britain > History.; Social History.; History of Medicine.; History of Britain and Ireland.
• Online Access: Link to Metadata

This open access book maps a crucial but neglected chapter in the history of psychiatry: how was melancholia transformed in the nineteenth century from traditional melancholy madness into a modern biomedical mood disorder, paving the way for the emergence of clinical depression as a psychiatric illness in the twentieth century? 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. .