Diseases have a history and understanding that history helps to understand how best to treat and control disease. Today's students are confronted with a multitude of often-frightening illnesses and afflictions - the "Biography of Diseases" series provides students with the information that they need to understand the origin of various maladies, how they impact contemporary society, and how doctors and researchers from around the world are fighting to devise treatments to alleviate or cure these diseases. This volume, "Depression", addresses a disease that afflicts millions of people every year, causing significant damage to the physical and emotional health." Depression" examines all aspects of the affliction, including: depression through the ages, from its earliest mention to the present, including how depression is portrayed in the arts; the demographics of the disorder - who is most likely to have depression, and what the prognosis would be; the clinical description of depression, including both physical and psychological symptoms; current techniques for testing for depression, including DNA testing and brain scans; an examination of the current research, and the possible treatments for the future; and, includes a glossary of important terms and a bibliography of accessible works that discuss the disease.