Ordinarily Well

September 30, 2016

A practicing doctor who trained as a psychotherapist and worked with pioneers in psychopharmacology, Peter Kramer combines his patients’ stories with a history of drug research, critiquing the growth of skepticism toward antidepressants and showing how industry-sponsored research findings can be skewed toward desired conclusions. Updating his prior writing about the nature of depression as a destructive illness and the effect of antidepressants on traits like low self-worth, Kramer shows how antidepressants act in practice: less often as miracle cures than as useful tools for helping troubled people achieve an underrated goal―becoming ordinarily well.

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Peter D. Kramer (Ordinarily Well, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is the author of seven books, including Against Depression, Should You Leave?, the novel Spectacular Happiness, and the international (and New York Times) bestseller Listening to Prozac. He has appeared on the major broadcast news and talk shows, including Today, Good Morning America, Oprah, Charlie Rose, and Fresh Air. His essays, op-eds, and book reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Slate, Times Literary Supplement, and elsewhere. Dr. Kramer lives and practices psychiatry in Providence, Rhode Island, where he is a professor at Brown University.

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Categories: Social Science & Philosophy