How can I spend two years of my life writing a new book on the subject of depression and then not tell you about it? I hope you can understand my desire to share my latest news with you in this blog. This brand new book arrived in bookstores across the U.S. just this past week. It represents not only two years of my professional life, but a sincere desire to help people get an updated and more balanced view of what it takes to overcome depression than what they'll get from a drug advertisement.

Let me tell you about the book. The book is called, Depression is Contagious: How the Most Common Mood Disorder is Spreading Around the World and How to Stop It. The book is published by The Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster. In this book, I counter the prevailing mythology that depression is a disease needing biological treatment. The drug companies have successfully convinced too many people of this viewpoint, proving that marketing can trump science. So, I use substantive evidence drawn from the fields of genetics, neuroscience, epidemiology, social psychology and clinical psychology to highlight that depression is more a social than medical problem. I make the statement, which I stand firmly by, that in the same way there will never be a drug to cure poverty or child abuse, there will never be a drug to cure depression. No amount of medication can change your history, teach you better coping and problem-solving skills, or build a support network for you. But, this book helps with those things and more. In it, I focus on the social side of depression for the simple reason that it is the social dimension that carries more weight than any other in shaping our vulnerability to depression.