Shared Agency

Depressive disorders are among the most common conditions in the world and are the leading causes of disability, affecting millions of people. Depression is also a common secondary condition, occurring at increased rates alongside virtually any illness that impacts brain function. Because it is so common, people suffering from depression seek help from a wide variety of clinicians, including: family doctors, pediatricians, gynecologists, psychiatrists, internists,psychologists, social workers and other therapists. In fact, depression is so common that the demand for care far exceeds the availability of psychiatrists, so that most depression is treated by other professionals in other specialty fields. For clinicians without significant experience treating depression, managing the condition can be confusing. This pocket-sized guide was specifically written with this diverse group of clinicians in mind. It provides a concise, practical and current overview of depressive disorders, including making adiagnosis, identifying important medical and psychiatric comorbidities, and describes our current understanding of the epidemiology, genetics and neurobiology of the condition. In addition to these topics, most of this book is focused on a programmatic approach toward managing depression, includingsubpopulations such as children or women who are pregnant. This book may also be of interest for people experiencing depression and their families to help guide treatment seeking and provide education. Dr. Stephen Strakowski and Dr. Erik Nelson are internationally recognized and trusted experts in the study and treatment of mood disorders whose own extensive clinical experience working with people with depression guides this book.Human beings act together in characteristic ways, and these forms of shared activity matter to us a great deal. Think of friendship and love, singing duets, dancing together, and the joys of conversation. And think about the usefulness of conversation and how we frequently manage to work together to achieve complex goals, from building buildings to putting on plays to establishing important results in the sciences.With Shared Agency, Michael E. Bratman seeks to answer questions about the conceptual, metaphysical and normative foundations of our sociality and to establish a framework for understanding basic forms of sociality. Bratman proposes that a rich account of individual planning agency facilitates the step to these forms of sociality.There is an independent reason - grounded in the diachronic organization of our temporally extended agency - to see planning structures as basic to our individual agency. Once these planning structures are on board, we can expect them to play central roles in our sociality. This planning theory of individual agency highlights distinctive roles and norms of intentions, understood as plan states. In Shared Agency Bratman argues that appeals to these planning structures enable us toprovide adequate resources for an account of sufficient conditions for these basic forms of sociality. Shared agency emerges, both functionally and rationally, from structures of interconnected planning agency.