When Depression Is Like a Cancer

Depression is not cancer. It’s a completely different disease. Yet when I look back on my husband’s depression and death by suicide three years ago, it sure looks a lot like cancer to me. As an adolescent medicine physician in Los Angeles, I have cared for many patients with depression and mental illness, and as…

When Music Is the Best Medicine

When Emily Caudill learned she had an ovarian germ cell tumor at the age of 25, she did not want to undergo chemotherapy. An accomplished bluegrass fiddler, she knew that hearing loss is a common side effect of some chemicals — so common that drugs harmful to the ear have acquired an adjective: they are…