Shireen Walton:
"The fusion of approach and insight expertly mixed by Behrouzan renders Prozak Diaries something of a remedy itself—identifying and attending to old wounds in mental health knowledge, practice, and experience. Overall, the book sets an important precedent for continued crossdisciplinary research in/on Iran, the Middle East, and beyond."
Dina Omar:
"Behrouzan blends deep historical insights that are indigenous to the region with "imports" and insights that were as relevant in 9th and 10th centuries are they are today. She blends English and Persian. She blends biomedical and poetic language, cultural and political references... By any standard, Prozak Diaries is meticulously crafted and exceptionally well-executed. Behrouzan's medical training, deep historical perspective, cultural analysis, and careful ethnographic writing illuminate a way of thinking about the Middle East that is often lacking. [This book] should be considered an invaluable ethnography for all medical students, medical and psychological anthropologists, those interested psychoanalytic theory, and those studying the Middle East, Central Asia, or the Muslim World in general."
Afsaneh Najmabadi:
"A richly textured ethnographic and historical study of how languages and practices of 'sciences of the soul'—including psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis—have traveled to and in Iran, and what contemporary cultural work they perform. Full of brilliant unexpected insights, this is an indispensable text for understanding today's Iran."
Byron Good:
"Prozak Diaries is a brilliant analysis of psychological remembering and cultural reworking, the domestication of neuropsychiatry and pharmaceutical treatments of depreshen, and the structure of feelings of a generation expressed through blogs, literary productions, and self-reflection."
Narges Bajoghli:
"Starting the story in the 1930s when the foundations of modern Iranian psychiatry were established in what became the famed Ruzbeh Hospital in Tehran, Behrouzan provides a much-needed, comprehensive overview of the development of the field...Behrouzan's timely book is very important in the fields of anthropology and Middle East Studies because it makes significant interventions on key questions of generational formations, biomedical discourses, and the everyday lived experiences of feeling states."
Jennifer Leaning:
"This remarkable book reveals the myriad of ways in which a popularized medical discourse, artistic expression, and psychological metaphor have been intertwined to permit people to speak about how they feel. Only Orkideh Behrouzan, a scholar conversant in these several disciplines and deeply steeped in Persian culture, could trace this interpretive pattern—one that will be of deep interest to those who study war, social resilience, and the work of memory."
Sebastian Rojas Navarro:
"The book is written gracefully, offering a rich and elegant ethnographic approach to the matter of subjectivities by analyzing the rise and normalization of psychiatric discourses in post 1980s Iran...Overall, this book provides a wonderful account of how historical and cultural circumstances can produce a generational mark with deep psychological implications. But even more, the book is a lucid and beautifully written example of how people, in their everyday lives, actively manage to continue being alive and making sense of their past and their present."
"The book will interest doctors at all levels of training, especially those interested in cross-cultural, historical and political aspects of psychiatry. As a UK-trained Iranian psychiatrist, and an immigrant of the 1980s generation, I specially related to Prozak Diaries. The book is a valuable adjunct in assisting the management of patients affected by the recent Middle Eastern conflicts."
Arne S. Steinforth:
"Behrouzan's subtle and sophisticated critique of the opposing trends within Iranian psychiatry redirects the discussion into the already existing channels of communication between neuropsychiatric, psychodynamic and anthropological approaches. Her book should prove very suitable reading for academic teaching across a wide range of university disciplines – not least of all social anthropology – and will make for fascinating and inspiring literature for any interested reader with a moderate degree of specialist knowledge in navigating the borderlands between psychiatry and social anthropology."
Veena Das:
"With the exquisite literary sensibility of a writer and the analytical astuteness of a scientist, Orkideh Behrouzan has written an exceptional book that brings the experiences of psychiatry and individuals' need for improvisation in an uncertain world alive to the reader. Navigating between the experiences of different generations of Iranians, this book provides one of the most compelling accounts I have read of how historical and psychological experiences fold and refold into everyday life. In its execution of this difficult project, the book breaks all boundaries between disciplines, and between expert knowledge and lay knowledge. A splendid achievement."
Shahla Talebi:
"Orkideh Behrouzan's Prozak Diaries provides an ethnographically rich and theoretically embedded entry into the ever-shifting post-revolutionary Iranian milieuThe book is enriched by vigorous research and extensive native knowledgeProzak Diaries makes an invaluable contribution to medical and sociocultural anthropology, as well as scholarship on memory, trauma, and Iran. Behrouzan's beautiful writing, free from jargon, renders it accessible to both experts and lay educated readers."
Arzoo Osanloo:
"Orkideh Behrouzan's Prozāk Diaries is a formidable undertaking that elegantly recounts the generational shift in how young Iranians talk about and experience their post-revolutionary and postwar experiences....The book is written in fluid prose and possesses a clear narrative arc. One of the strengths of this book is Behrouzan's literary sensibility, through which she interlaces ethnographic descriptions with analyses of aesthetic works, literature, poetry, and music....Prozāk Diaries should have a broad and varied readership. As a scholarly book, it will be attractive not only to students of Iranian studies, but also anthropology, medical and sociocultural, as well as those working in Medicine, especially Psychiatry, and Science and Technology. Prozāk Diaries should also be read widely by non-academics interested in depression, postwar trauma, medical histories, and, of course, contemporary Iran."
