TV

Democracy Now

"Psychotherapist and writer Gary Greenberg participated in a clinical trial for antidepressant medication and found that more often than not the drugs failed to outperform placebos. His latest book is a scientific, medical, historical and cultural exploration of the antidepressant revolution here in the United States. It’s called Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease..."

©2010 Democracy Now.

Radio & Podcasts:

WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show - Part 2

Gary Greenberg, psychotherapist and contributor to Harper's magazine, examines how psychotherapy has changed since the days of Freud. Psychology today focuses on winners: strong people who are highly resilient and psychologically fit...

Radio West

Radio West interviews Gary on his latest Harper's article, The War on Unhappiness...

On Point Radio

"Pharmaceutical companies and researchers are casting their nets too wide to find new patients, calling normal, rational feelings a disease, says Greenberg. Some simple sadness, the occasional melancholy, is part of a normal life, he says, and getting rid of them may mean getting rid of the soul..."

NPR Talk of the Nation - Science Friday

"Millions of Americans take antidepressant medications. But how did that come to be, and does such widespread use of antidepressants serve a real medical need? In this segment, Ira talks with Gary Greenberg, author of the book "Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease." What do we know about the causes of depression and how best to deal with it?"

WHYY's Radio Times

"Like millions of Americans, psychotherapist and author Gary Greenberg suffers from depression. In his new book, Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease, Greenberg examines how sadness became labeled as a disease that could be medicated..."

WLRN's Topical Currents
Scroll to March 9th, 2010

WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show

"Gary Greenberg discusses depression, drawing on medical scholarship, his 25 years as a psychotherapist, and his own experience with depression to show how it has been marketed as a widespread chronic disease, packaged by scientists, doctors, and marketing experts..."

Changesurfer Radio

"Dr. J. chats with Gary Greenberg, author of Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease..."

Magazines

The New Yorker

"Greenberg basically regards the pathologizing of melancholy and despair, and the invention of pills designed to relieve people of those feelings, as a vast capitalist conspiracy to paste a big smiley face over a world that we have good reason to feel sick about. The aim of the conspiracy is to convince us that it’s all in our heads, or, specifically, in our brains—that our unhappiness is a chemical problem, not an existential one..."

Psychology Today

"Gary Greenberg has written a blistering, rambling and entertaining attack on the biomedical disease model of depression. It's the story of how advertising, pharmaceutical companies, and psychiatrists packaged unhappiness as a medical disease to be treated with antidepressants.With nearly thirty million Americans taking antidepressants at an annual cost of 10 billion dollars, Greenberg is David armed with a slingshot, careful research, and clever one-liners..."

Brooklyn Rail

"Gary Greenberg opens his new history of depression with a riveting tale of scientific ingenuity. A young, unknown marine biologist with an interest in mussels happens to discover the neurotransmitter serotonin and helps spur the antidepressant revolution. Lest we get too excited, though, Greenberg deflates our hopes just a few pages in..."

The Star

"Gary Greenberg knows depression. He once lay on the floor for hours watching dust drift through the sunbeams – for no other reason than getting up and looking 'into my own black insides would just take too much effort.' But in his new book, Manufacturing Depression: the Secret History of a Modern Disease, the psychotherapist argues that identifying depression as a disease, as has become accepted practice among doctors and drug companies, is not only wrong, it's dangerous..."

D Magazine (Italian)

"A guardare la foto di Gary Greenberg sulla quarta di copertina viene in mente il dottor Squires di Fa’ la cosa sbagliata: capelli lunghi brizzolati raccolti sulla nuca, camicia neohippie, un guizzo di ironia nello sguardo. Non si fa fatica a immaginarselo, come lo psicanalista newyorkese del film, decidere alla fine di vendere bustine di marijuana in giro per Battery Park con un carretto di gelati come copertura. E in effetti, in Manufacturing Depression, The Secret History of a Modern Disease (Bloomsbury Publishing), il libro di cui è autore, qualche pagina parla di ecstasy..."