ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author focuses on the 'mental disorder' called depression, on how it came to be created, and how it continues to be sustained. He does this because the notion of depression played a key role not only in the 'psy' wars, but also in the production of CBT. In what follows, he draws heavily on the works of Kutchins and Kirk, Joanna Moncrieff, and Ben Goldacre. By the 1990s, the widespread use of antidepressants helped to strengthen the concept of depression as a common biological disorder and the idea that personal problems could be attributed to a chemical imbalance. That is, the very concept of the antidepressant helped to fashion our modern notion of depression (Moncrieff). This whole way of thinking in the psychiatric profession was driven by the profession's concern 'to integrate with general medicine, to establish its scientific credentials in order to improve its status' (Moncrieff).
