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A review by peripetia
The Inflamed Mind: A Radical New Approach to Depression by Edward Bullmore
2.0
I have been reading a lot around this topic lately, and apparently there really is evidence that points to inflammation as either a culprit or a correlation in some mental illnesses. Still, this book did not manage to be very convincing in its argument.
At least half of the book was not on inflammation but on the history of the mind/body divide in medicine and in our thinking in general. This may be justified - it is relevant background information, I suppose - but it was too much. The author spends less time on actual scientific evidence than on theorizing and encouraging the medical and pharmaceutical fields to take action. Again, this may be justified, but it didn't give me much useful information.
I was most annoyed by the attempt to theorize an evolutionary benefit to mental illnesses. Just because something exists, doesn't mean that evolution engineered it to be just so. We like to think of evolution as an intelligent creator, but sometimes stuff just happens. Also, more importantly, the author does not know why humans suffer from mental illnesses, and it's completely useless to try to invent some kind of "humans of the savannah" model to explain it. Also, the author's ties to the pharmaceutical industry make me instantly skeptical.
Still, the inflammation model seems to have some merit, although my opinion as a non-medical professional is pretty worthless. Of course I won't let it stop me from giving it, though.
At least half of the book was not on inflammation but on the history of the mind/body divide in medicine and in our thinking in general. This may be justified - it is relevant background information, I suppose - but it was too much. The author spends less time on actual scientific evidence than on theorizing and encouraging the medical and pharmaceutical fields to take action. Again, this may be justified, but it didn't give me much useful information.
I was most annoyed by the attempt to theorize an evolutionary benefit to mental illnesses. Just because something exists, doesn't mean that evolution engineered it to be just so. We like to think of evolution as an intelligent creator, but sometimes stuff just happens. Also, more importantly, the author does not know why humans suffer from mental illnesses, and it's completely useless to try to invent some kind of "humans of the savannah" model to explain it. Also, the author's ties to the pharmaceutical industry make me instantly skeptical.
Still, the inflammation model seems to have some merit, although my opinion as a non-medical professional is pretty worthless. Of course I won't let it stop me from giving it, though.