Depressive Disorders: Mechanisms, Measurement and Management

This book offers a state-of-the-art report on recent discoveries concerning the basic and clinical, neuroscientific and psychiatric findings in depression research. Depressive disorder is a severe and recurrent brain disorder that can manifest in depressive mood, somatic symptoms and cognitive impairment. The underlying mechanisms of depressive disorder and its clinical practice are subjects of long-standing interests. This book is a biologically plausible and multilevel theory which describes neural, physiological, molecular and genomic mechanisms that drive depression pathogenesis, as well as navigates the clinical practice and management for depressive disorder.  It mainly describes advances made over the past 20 years on the neural, molecular, neuroimaging, physiology, pathophysiology, pharmacology and internet-based measurement and management of depressive disorder. It will help postgraduate students and academic researchers to get either basic or clinical picture of depressive disorder. Also, it may benefit pharmaceutical companies for developing novel drugs to treat this disease.  

Dr. Yiru Fang is a Director and Chief Psychiatrist at the Clinical Research Center, and the National Key Clinical Disciplines at the Shanghai Mental Health Center. He is also a Director and Professor at the Management Center for Mood Disorders, and the Clinical Research Center for Mental Disorders at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine. Dr. Fang is the chairman of Chinese Society of Neuroscience & Psychiatry, and the vice chairman of Chinese Society of Psychiatry. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Affective Disorders, Neuroscience Bulletin, International Journal of Bipolar Disorders, and General Psychiatry; and a Member of China Expert Advisory Group of the Lancet Psychiatry. Dr. Fang has been worked in mental health for 35 years, and published over 300 papers in Chinese and international psychiatric journals, as well as 20 book chapters. Dr Fang has devoted himself to practicing, researching, teaching and training in the field of psychiatry. As a principal investigator, he has completed various biological, clinical and implementation research projects on depression and bipolar disorders funded by national and local governments.