Where the Roots Reach for Water : A Personal & Natural History of Melancholia [Hardcover]

Jeffery Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1999

Jeffery Smith was living in Missoula, Montana, and was into his eighth year as a psychiatric case manager when his own struggles with clinical depression began. Eventually, all his prescribed antidepressant medications proved ineffective. Unlike many such personal accounts, Where the Roots Reach for Water describes what happened after Smith decided to give them up. Trying to learn how to make a life with his illness, Smith sets out to get at the essence of--using the old term for depression--melancholia.

What he learns utterly transforms his life. Deftly woven into his "personal history" is a "natural history" of this ancient illness-a natural history that surveys, as we might expect, recent neurobiological research and speculation about depression's evolutionary purpose. But Smith also draws on centuries of art, writing, and medical treatises inspired by the illness and its very near kin, the melancholic temperament. His imaginative natural history of melancholia touches on mythology, anthropology, religious history, love and sex, philosophy, and our relationship with landscapes.

In addition, Smith tells numerous instructive stories of the men and women--from commoners to artists, from scientists to saints--who fitted their lives to melancholia before the advent of "seratonin reuptake inhibitors," twelve-step groups, or talk therapy, and he contemplates why contemporary America has become the "Prozac nation."

In describing the contours of melancholia's landscape, Smith poignantly finds his place within it. His attempts to forge a meaningful life within the confines of his seemingly invincible illness also take us across a number of vividly rendered physical landscapes, from the Appalachian foothills of Ohio and West Virginia, where he was born and raised, to the American West, where most of this narrative unfolds. In the process, he abandons his mental health career. A lifelong cynic, he finds faith and struggles to sustain it. He mends fences with his family. He falls in love, and for the first time stays there.

Where the Roots Reach for Water is a provocative and highly original memoir that recovers for us a trove of stories and ideas that, while long obscured, can teach us how we in this new "Age of Depression" might acclimate ourselves to melancholia's sundry lives.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Not only a searing account of one man's battle against chronic depression, this deftly crafted memoir is also an intriguing cultural history of melancholy. After methodically planning to drown himself, spurred by a temporary paralysis he attributes to taking three different antidepressant drugs at once, Smith decided to go off his medication cold turkey instead. He initially tried homeopathy, psychotherapy and St. John's wort (a plant believed by some to have an antidepressant effect), with mixed results. Finally, he achieved a breakthrough when a spiritual crisis freed him from narrow self-absorption and instilled a faith that helped him face down existential despair. Far from a born-again confessional, Smith's largely secular philosophical examination of depression ranges across cultures and centuries, from the ancient theory that a humoral imbalance produces a saturnine disposition to the view, shared by Pueblo Indians and the Yoruba of Nigeria, of depression as "soul loss," to the insights of evolutionary biologists and "contemporary humoralists" who believe that some individuals have an innately moody, risk-aversive temperament. Smith's personal odyssey extends from his Ohio Appalachian boyhood to Montana, where he worked as a case manager at a community mental health center, to North Carolina, where he engages in environmental activism. His conviction that depression has a spiritual dimension gives his graceful memoir wide-ranging appeal. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this, his first book, Smith interweaves a natural history of melancholia with the tale of his personal experiences with a cycle of intermittently ineffective antidepressants and his decision to seek an alternative therapy that combines homeopathy and psychotherapy. He explores the history and treatment of depression, personalizing it with references to his own experiences and to parallel landscapes of melancholia, religion, and the natural world (including his connection to diverse locations such as the Appalachian foothills, Missoula, MT, and Gillette, WY). The result is a unique perspective from which to consider depression. This fine piece of nonfiction writing is recommended for both public and academic libraries with collections on health, medicine, and a sense of place.
-ASue Samson, Univ. of Montana Lib., Missoula
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: North Point Press (August 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865475423
• ISBN-13: 978-0865475427
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,280,026 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books I have ever read on depression!, October 9, 1999

By 

Linda Kovach (Huntington Beach, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Where the Roots Reach for Water : A Personal & Natural History of Melancholia (Hardcover)

This book has changed my whole outlook on depression. Jeff used the word melancholia and explains its traditional meaning as one of four basic personality types. What I came to realize is the extent to which I had bought into the idea that I should not be who I am -- that I would be better off if I were whatever it is that anti-depressives can make me. Instead, Jeff presents an alternative perspective -- accepting that one has a melancholic personality and working with it rather than fighting my Self. In his book, Jeff instead talks about HOW TO LIVE AS A MELANCHOLIC and even lists positive characteristics of a melancholic personality with examples. So, now I have begun to approach my self differently -- with acceptance. I don't need to try to be gregarious and outgoing, instead I can accept my inwardness and focus on gardening, walking, art -- all practices for which the melancholic personality is well adapted. I highly recommend this book interested in an alternative take to the modern practice of "fixing" what, perhaps, "ain't broke" after all.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wayfaring Stranger in the Mountains of Melancholy, December 19, 1999

By 

Jill Van Vliet - See all my reviews

This review is from: Where the Roots Reach for Water : A Personal & Natural History of Melancholia (Hardcover)

Reading Jeffery Smith's memoir on depression is like watching someone attempt to assemble a pitch-black jigsaw puzzle: how, one wonders, will he differentiate a jig from a jag? How will he ever have the patience to root around for the answer in a crowded sea of clues which all resemble one big blot? Thing is, Smith sees his topic with a particular set of eyes, eyes which can disern color and pattern with only shape for guidance.

His astute, complex and compassionate understanding of melancholy reaches out to the reader in an effort to share information on a practical level, but ultimately his exploration will have you so engaged in his personal struggle that you may forget you're reading non-fiction. In the tradition of memoirs that read as compellingly as fiction (i.e., Tobias Wolff's "This Boy's Life"), Smith has created as ebullient a meditation as is possible on the subject. This is a roller coaster ride of sometimes absurdly heart-rending seeking. I finished it with a long sigh, and said out loud to myself, "Now, THAT'S a book!"

Highly recommended for anyone struggling with depression, but also simply for readers who enjoy an intellectually stimulating read on a subject in a previously predictable genre.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Adds to a growing list of compassionate books on depression, November 22, 1999

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Where the Roots Reach for Water : A Personal & Natural History of Melancholia (Hardcover)

The author, thankfully, recognizes that clinical depression, having a low-key or melancholic personality, or having a reason to be down in spirits, are different. As a cognitive psycholgist, I interact with people in their day-to-day work environment, and I find that lately we too freely call persons depressed when they may only be sad/angry because of something haunting them in the past or concerning them about the future (they need to talk about it), or when it is just their nature to look on the grim side of things (they need to have their outlook accepted and appreciated), or when they have learned that being sad is a protective mechanism against disappointment or cruelty (they need to be comforted). These are natural manifestations of natural human emotions, and they should never be medicated out of existence or forced out of existence by our modern, ebullient, and shallow society. Nor should natural personality traits be labeled as mental illness either.

However, clinical depression needs to be addressed as well. From my experiences, some of those who are mildly clinically depressed may heal naturally given time, rest, emotional support, good nutrition, regular exercise, and fresh air, as well as something to be hopeful or happy about, which is a motivator toward wellness. The worst thing about being clinically depressed is the sense that you are all alone, and so depressed persons need compassionate (not forced) inclusion in caring society, as this author supports.

I haven't finished the book yet prior to writing this review, so I don't know if the author has a chance to talk about some irritants that can cause seemingly untreatable depression -- not just medical conditions like glucose-intolerance, anemia, or thyroid activity, but we have published findings on chemical fumes in poorly ventilated industrial environments or at home from man-made materials (plastic items, rugs), questions about chemical leeching from plastic containers like soda bottles, or concerns about our air quality and nutritional content of foods. Food allergies, which many medical professionals refuse to accept, can also be culprits (an astoundingly fabulous book about this, available through amazon, is IS THIS YOUR CHILD? by Rapp).

There is a reason why we get depressed, and if it is a biological discrepancy (profound sadness or lack of motivation which lasts too long, or sadness with no basis), we need to find what it is rather than try to erase it with a pill (medication doesn't always work in the long run). However, if we are sad by nature or cirumstance, I agree with the author that that is no reason to classify us and medicate us. In the book, the author is a pioneer in supporting a traditional attitude that has fallen out of favor -- being kind enough to accept yourself as you are, to accept that what you feel may be natural and right. What a wonderful idea, in our technological society, to say that emotions are okay to feel.