Book Learning: American Mania: When More Is Not Enough

Anxious? Join the crowd. A new book by Dr. Peter C. Whybrow, the director of the Semel Institute of Neuroscience and Human Behavior at the University of California, Los Angeles, reports that 30 percent of the population is anxious, double the percentage of a decade ago, and that depression is rising too. Whybrow thinks he knows why. As the New York Times describes it, Americans are addictively driven by the brain’s pleasure centers to live turbocharged lives in pursuit of status and possessions at the expense of the only things that can truly make us happy: relationships with other people. Whybrow describes it like this: "In our compulsive drive for more, we are making ourselves sick." Read the Times story about "American Mania: When More Is Not Enough"