I found it kind of boring myself but only glanced at it for a very brief period. I'm planning to revisit it. I think you're right that it was all over the place and didn't have a great focus. Still maybe that's how "emotional life" is and at least it's focusing on "life" and not the "brain" so much. That's pretty huge.

Ditto. Without pharma approval of content, we are allowed to consider the influence of family and social forces upon behavior.

Episode 2 went from the sublime (treating PTSD and phobias successfully with cognitive behavioral therapy and similar techniques) to the ridiculous (implying antidepressant and ECT-induced neuronal growth could cure depression). Really ended on an ugly note -- 16 ECT treatments on a young teen-age girl. Whew -- take back anything I said yesterday about this series.

The word "cure" was never mentioned in either of the 2 segments/evenings I watched, whether referring to the gentleman with chronic PTSD or the young woman with treatment-resistant depression. I occasionally check in here at Furious Seasons because of the up-to-date and important information that Philip Dawdy shares with his blog readers. But the decidely anti-science & anti-psychiatry posts/slant of this website sadly reflect a narrow-mindedness that still baffles me. "To learn to think is to learn to question" and to that end, Furious Seasons does a great job.
Unfortunately,the dismissive and self-righteous remarks and opinions of many of the regulars here are a total turn off for this reader.

Nancy, Sorry the comment threads are a turn-off (maybe you should stop reading them) and that I misspoke using the word "cure." I thought the first hour of last night's segment was terrific but the second hour was very sloppy science in my view. No one really knows what the "neuronal growth" caused by antidepressants and ECT really represents yet it is systematically portrayed as being a good -- and probably healing -- thing. This is a very significant assumption and could be completely wrong. Also if depression causes hippocampal shrinkage that doesn't mean that depression is a "brain disease." Let's not put the cart before the horse. Hippocampal shrinkage is almost certainly the result of depression, not something that precedes it although it may be true that it could worsen a downward spiral. If 16 ECT treatments did not "cure" that young woman then can you honestly say they were worth undertaking? I really shudder at what the long term effects of that will be on someone who really was too young to give adequate informed consent. She should have been withdrawn carefully from all her many courses of medication first to be sure that they hadn't exacerbated her condition before undertaking something as drastic as that.

Maybe Nancy will consider the harsh reality behind Sara's and my concern and voices here in this comment section.

http://tinyurl.com/yzqk7f3

My daughter needs all voices now.