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Depression is the most common psychiatric illness worldwide. It is estimated that 1 in 5 of us will suffer from depression at some point and that, by 2020, depression will have overtaken heart disease as the single biggest illness in the world. How can we disentangle biological causes from complex social and cultural factors? Can social treatments compete with Prozac? And why, when materially life is better than ever before, are we all feeling so blue anyway? Tonight's speaker is Julian Leff, Professor of Social and Cultural Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry. Winner of the Burgholzi prize for outstanding contributions to psychiatry, he contributes regularly to television and radio and has published widely, including his recent book, The Unbalanced Mind. In the chair is Daniel Glaser, neuroscientist at UCL.