‘David’s Inferno’: Depression’s Lessons

This week The Takeaway has been looking at health care coverage around the country, paying special attention to how the Affordable Care Act is being implemented state by state while also examining real-life experiences of medicine — inside views of hospitals and intensive care units and what sicknesses and treatment look like up close.Next week when the fifth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is released it’s expected to bring with it new debate on the definition of illness itself — about what’s a disorder and what’s just another kind of normal.This is a question that interests David Blistein, author of “David’s Inferno: My Journey through the Dark Wood of Depression.”   His book chronicles his struggle with debilitating depression.   That process that made him consider that maybe depression is more than just an illness.