“Professor Bullmore explores how the current division between Psychiatry and the rest of medicine has developed and how we might change that. He puts forward a fascinating theory that attributes depression to inflammation rather than serotonin imbalance as has traditionally been thought.”
Wendy Burn, President Royal College of Psychiatrists
It’s long been known that stress – e.g. from bereavement, or loss of employment, or abuse during childhood – is one of the biggest risks for depression. But are such stresses also causes of inflammation and does this in turn contribute to depression?
These are two of the central questions examined in this book from Prof. Edward Bullmore, (Head of Psychiatry Dept. at Cambridge University). In doing so he moves away from psychiatry’s continuing mainstream focus on prescribing drugs to combat alleged ‘chemical imbalances’ in the brain, moving instead towards looking at the science behind things that can reduce inflammation – e.g. meditation, cold-water swimming and the gut microbiome.
The publishers say:
“In this game-changing book … Professor Edward Bullmore reveals the breakthrough new science on the link between depression and inflammation of the body and brain. He explains how and why we now know that mental disorders can have their root cause in the immune system, and outlines a future revolution in which treatments could be specifically targeted to break the vicious cycle of stress, inflammation and depression.
The Inflamed Mind goes far beyond the clinic and the lab, representing a whole new way of looking at how mind, brain and body all work together in a sometimes misguided effort to help us survive in a hostile world. It offers insights into the story of Western medicine, how we have got it wrong as well as right in the past, and how we could start getting to grips with depression and other mental disorders much more effectively in the future …”
You can find out more from here.
