Worldwide, depression will be the single biggest cause of disability in the next 20 years. But treatment for it has not changed much in the last three decades. 

Professor Edward Bullmore explains how and why we now know that mental disorders can have their root cause in the immune system, and outlines a future revolution in which treatments could be specifically targeted to break the vicious cycle of stress, inflammation and depression.

The Inflamed Mind goes far beyond the clinic and the lab, representing a whole new way of looking at how mind, brain and body all work together in a sometimes misguided effort to help us survive in a hostile world. It offers insights into the story of Western medicine, how we have got it wrong as well as right in the past, and how we could start getting to grips with depression and other mental disorders much more effectively in the future.

'Suddenly an expert who wants to stop and question everything we thought we knew...This is a lesson in the workings of the brain far too important to ignore.'  Jeremy Vine, BBC