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The Noonday Demon

© John McManamy

"Depression merits its own magnum opus, and this is one you definitely want ... "

Andrew Solomon has written a blockbuster of a book, "The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression" (Scribner, 443 pages not counting notes and index), that covers a wealth of material that is both its strength and its weakness. First, we have the author's battles with depression and anxiety, which left him incapacitated and unable to even cut the food others prepared for him. In despair, he engages in unprotected sex with other men in the hope of contracting HIV so he will have a good excuse to kill himself. (To his surprise, he fails to turn up HIV-positive.)

Gradually, as new themes are introduced, the personal narrative falls away, and we hear of the author's friends and family, including his mother who elected to take her own life rather than have cancer claim her. Interspersed with these personal stories are factual tracts and journalistic tours de force. Of special interest are the author's trips abroad - to Cambodia and a killing fields survivor who rehabilitates other survivors, to Senegal where he participates in a ritual exorcism involving a slaughtered lamb and beating drums (which he describes as "a kind of unplugged ECT"), and to Greenland where depression among the Inuit is endemic but is taboo in conversation.

But it is when he is writing about poverty that the author is at his most passionate and authoritative. According to figures cited in the book, 42 percent of heads of households receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children meet the criteria for clinical depression - more than twice the national average - and 53 percent of pregnant welfare mothers are in the same condition.

"Virtually all of America's indigent," he writes, "are, for obvious reasons displeased with their situation; but many of them are, additionally, paralyzed by it, physiologically unable to conceive of or undertake measures to improve their lot. In this era of welfare reform, we are asking that the poor pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but the indigent who suffer from depression have no bootstraps and cannot pull themselves up."

Where this atlas drops its load is in the area of alternative and complementary therapies, which are presented here as idle curios rather than information one would consider acting on. Also conspicuously absent is a good elaboration of the science of mental illness, and what the experts in neurology, genetics, and other fields are thinking.

The copyright of the article The Noonday Demon in Depression is owned by Kathy Brewis. Permission to republish The Noonday Demon in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.