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What it argues
The Noonday Demon is Andrew Solomon's exhaustive, literary account of depression — his own experience of it, its science and treatment history, its cultural and political dimensions, and the lives of people living with it across the world. Published in 2001, it won the National Book Award and remains the most comprehensive single work on depression available to a general reader. At 700 pages, it is not a quick read, but its ambition is matched by its achievement: to describe depression from every possible angle simultaneously.
Solomon begins with his own severe depression, describing the experience with precision rare in mental health literature — the physical weight of it, the way it collapses the future, the animal confusion of a mind unable to recognize itself. He had successful electroconvulsive therapy after multiple medication failures, and his account of ECT is particularly valuable for reducing the stigma attached to a treatment that is both more effective and more commonly feared than it deserves.
What it gets right
- 1.
Depression is not sadness but a different state entirely — an inability to feel, want, or anticipate, often accompanied by physical sensations of weight and paralysis that are as real as any organic disease.
- 2.
No single treatment works for all depressions: Solomon's own response to multiple antidepressant failures and eventual ECT success illustrates how individualized the treatment journey must be.
- 3.
ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) is one of the most effective treatments for severe, treatment-resistant depression, with a better safety record than its popular portrayal implies.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Andrew Solomon is an American writer and lecturer who covers politics, culture, and psychology. He is a MacArthur Foundation grant recipient, a past president of PEN American Center, and a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University Medical Center. He received his BA and MA from Yale and his PhD from Cambridge. His other books include Far from the Tree (on families of children who are different from their parents) and A Stone Boat. The Noonday Demon won the National Book Award in 2001 and has been translated into twenty-four languages. Solomon lectures internationally and has testified before Congress on mental health policy.
