From Melancholia to Depression Disordered Mood in Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry

• Main Author: Jansson, Åsa (auth)
• Format: Electronic Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Nature 2021
• Series: Mental Health in Historical Perspective
• Subjects: Social & cultural history; History of medicine; Psychiatry; British & Irish history; Social History; History of Medicine; History of Britain and Ireland; Mood disorders; Psychiatric illness; Physiology; Psychology; Statistical and diagnostic practices; Asylum records; Insanity; Madness; Mental pain; Suicidal tendencies; Psychological distress; Open Access; European history
• Online Access: OAPEN Library: download the publication; OAPEN Library: description of the publication

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.