Depression Books

This book will surely help you halt the 'guilties' when it comes to the practice of Christmas. Surely all of us know on some level how Christmas has become too commercial, too materialistic. Dummer's book gives lots of advice on how to bypass the commercial materialism and connect to the true spirit of Christmas. I highly recommend this book!

I have read books on 'how to' garden, cook, travel, invest, exercise, meditate, sew, understand my significant other, decorate, manage time, etc but never once have I learn 'how to' deal with Cristmas! As I read, the words hit close to home. Could it be the author wrote the book especially with me in mind? Until I read the book, I really didn't know how to cope with the holiday.

I feel confident that the words of encourgement, the many suggestions, and the compassion so wonderfully expressed by the author will enable me to make it through Christmas 2000!

Christmas Makes Me Crazy is definitely a 'must read'!

"The Coming of the New Deal" is the second in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.'s trilogy, "The Age of Roosevelt". Covering the period of 1933-1934, it is a worthy successor to its predecessor, "The Crisis of the Old Order" (see my Amazon review).

This volume is organized by the various challenges faced. Separate chapters are allotted to agriculture, industrial planning, public works, the labor movement and the coalescence of opposition to FDR. The book ends with an assessment or Roosevelt's leadership style.

I read this in preparation for a continuing ed class on the New Deal and found it to be very helpful.

The New Deal was immediately faced with impending crises, including the imminent collapse of the banking system and a real risk of social revolution. The controversial remedies chosen to combat these are covered in some detail. This book provides the reader with an understanding of many of the New Deal projects, including the NRA, the PWA, CCC and the agricultural plans, which included the destruction of piglets and the plowing up of crops in times of famine. His initiatives on soil conservation and conservation mirrored those of his role model, Theodore Roosevelt.

The opponents of FDR, Al Smith, Huey Long and Fr. Coughlin are presented in their goals, tactics and the effect they had on the New Deal and the country.

FDR's political efforts in the 1934 election are examined and assessed. For all his success in building a Democratic majority, he was less successful in building a liberal majority. I was surprised to find that FDR had one of the highest veto totals up to his time.

The personnel with whom he dealt with including the cabinet, Vice-President John Nance Garner and Joseph Kennedy provide interesting insights into other prominent characters of his era.

Analyses of FDR and his practices by Schlesinger and others, including Oliver Wendell Holmes give the reader a depth of perspective in judging the most loved and hated of American leaders.

"The Coming of The New Deal" provides the reader with an in depth study of a crucial two years in American history. It is clearly written by a liberal and, to some extent, the bias shows. Despite that, this book is not an unmitigated paean of Roosevelt and does, I believe, convey a reliable record of the times. It is must reading for any student of the New Deal Era.

Arthur M. Schlesinger wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning series on "The Age of Roosevelt" almost a half-century ago. This volume is the middle volume of that trilogy, covering the period 1933-1935.

In assessing Roosevelt's role only a generation removed from the activity itself, Schlesinger chose to utilize Plutarch's approach of evaluating the man and his character to see how history developed.

Schlesinger takes into account much more than just Franklin Roosevelt; he looks at the supporting cast of the FDR administration as well. By evaluting primarily Roosevelt, his cabinet, and his advisors, Schlesinger has given us a fabulous biographical view into the decision making of the first few years of the New Deal era.

Schlesinger has opted to take a primarily topic based approach rather than a chronological approach to addressing the major issues faced by the administration during these years. The primary areas he looks at are agriculture, industry, economics, social relief, labor, conservatism, and the start of the "imperial" Presidency. By evaluating each of these topics using a person-based approach, the reader is able to garner an understanding of why the Roosevelt administration was so successful in its efforts to combat the fear prevalent in America at this time. When FDR told America in his first inagural address that "...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." he truly meant that he wanted to make his administration an effort to conquer the concerns ravaging Americans.

By evaluating individuals rather than just events, Schlesinger has presented the reader with a biographical sense of why each initiative was undertaken, and that FDR was not afraid of "failure" - if an effort did not pan out, he simply discarded it and tried something different to solve the problem.

This book certainly is not about the long-term effects of the New Deal, nor does it give us tremendous background on all of the individual efforts of the Roosevelt administration to beat the Depression, but it isn't really meant to. The book accomplishes everything the author has set forth to achieve, and is a spectacular read.

I found this book straight forward and practical. Its structure breaks down into the differented types of blues/ depression and has practical tips in how to help oneself. What I like best is that it reminds us that everyone gets the blues!

The quality of the information is first class.Easy to read and very enlightening. Something for everyone and every kind of depression. Very upbeat and action oriented. I find the graphics and drawings a bit choppy and distracting but the material is very good.

I have tried to secure more copies of this book for a course I teach to loved ones of those struggling with brain disorders but have been unsuccessful. I have even written to the publisher but received no reply. This book shows how essential it is for well family members to appropriately respond to their ill relative's chemical imbalance not only for the benefit of the one with the disorder but the family member as well. I refer to this book often in dealing with chemical imbalance in family members.

Our lives were ruined by my wife's depression and I unknowingly was becoming "fused" into her illness. We argued constantly. She threatened suicide. I threatened divorce. We were fighting a war that had no end and blamed each other. We now understand how the contagious force of depression was infecting our lives. We both take medication and have learned how to manage our communication effectively

I used this book several years ago, maybe three, and it was so helpful. It is much more than a pep-talk, it is a specific how-to manual that gives you concrete ideas about the steps you must take to lift yourself out of your slump/minor depression.

First, you have to get a handle on whether you are depressed (it could be something else making you blue), and how severely you are depressed. The book is designed for people whose depression scores are between 5-15 on the Beck scale (provided). If you are higher than 15, the author recommends that you give the book a try, but keep in mind that you MAY need professional assistance. I was a 23, but this book worked wonders for me, without any assistance.

The book has a behavioral approach to depression. This means that the authors believe your depressive behavior and feelings can be changed by first identifying/focusing on antecedents (what precedes your behavior or feelings) and consequences (what follows a behavior). The next step is to consciously change the antecedents and consequences of your behavior, rewarding yourself as you do so, and thereby slowly and steadily lift yourself out of depression.

A behavioral focus also means that this book will not help you analyze how you got started in your depressive behavior patterns. The authors believe it is not necessary to dig through all that stuff that in order to change yourself.

So in a way, this book is the antithesis of "talk therapy" -- I'd call this "do therapy".

The authors acknowledge that there are multiple roads to depression, that every depressed person has a unique set of problems. However, many of these problems can be lumped into broad categories, each of which is given a chapter clearly explaining strategies for improving your skills in that area. The strategy chapters include: "Learning to Relax", "Pleasant Activities", "Learning How to Be Socially Skillful", "Using Your Social Skills", "Controlling Thoughts", and "Constructive Thinking".

For my bout of depression, the two chapters I needed to focus on were "Pleasant Activities" and "Constructive Thinking".

The idea behind "Pleasant Activities" is that you are depressed because most of your interactions with your environment do not have rewarding outcomes and/or have dissatisfying, unpleasant, or distressing outcomes. So, to change your depression, you need to change the balance so that you get more positive than negative payoffs from interacting your environment, every single day.

I actually had to rate a list of 320 activities (provided) with how pleasant I found them and how frequently I was able to do them, and then use that to create an activity list with 100 things I like and am able to do. I added a few of my own that were not included in the list. Then I had to make a daily plan that made time for several of those activities every day, and I had to chart my daily mood so I could see if I felt better when I did more of those activities.

This was incredibly valuable to me, and highly effective. When I start feeling depressed I want to hole up and sleep, doing only the most "necessary" activities (which often tend to be quite unrewarding - dishes, laundry, etc...). The authors insist that you do activities you LIKE to do, regardless of their actual utility.

For me, my list includes things like carve stamps, write reviews on Amazon, watch Voyager episodes, make stuff with beads and/or fabric, talk on the phone with a friend, etc... When I feel that slump coming on, it is too easy to view these activities as TIME WASTED, something to beat myself up about. The thing I now keep in mind is that the small things that energize me and make me happy are actually IMPORTANT in and of themselves, just because I like to do them.

"Constructive thinking" was also very helpful to me, because I realize that I have these ongoing monologues in my head that are very critical and very hurtful -- I say things to myself I would NEVER say to my children, things that I know would be devastating to say to children -- and yet, I listen to myself say horrible thing after judgmental thing after critical thing to myself!!

Well anyway. It may sound like this book has a simplistic view of depression, but actually, I think it is quite well rounded. It provides the framework for an action plan to combat depression, but you fill in the details.

There are a few potential problems with this book. First, you have to know yourself pretty well in order to use the book. You have to know what actually rewards you, what your strengths and weaknesses are. You have to be able to assess yourself with the tools the book gives you. Some people may need help to do this.

The second issue is that it takes a fair amount of work to set up these monitoring and behavior programs for yourself. It takes a fair amount of self-discipline to keep following through (although you are supposed to be rewarding yourself for the steps you take). Some people may need help to do this.

Finally, I think that some people's brains may not be wired to think in quantitative terms. I tried to explain the "Pleasant Activities" list to another friend who felt depressed, and she was aghast. She said she could never rate activities, that her brain didn't work that way. So if she wanted to try this book, she would probably need help to work through it, to think about her problems in a behavioral, quantitative way.

For me, I think this was a little easier because we used ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis) with my son years ago when he was 3, so I was very familiar with the concepts driving this book, and quite experienced with the work involved in keeping up behavioral programs.

Oh, one more thing, this book directly doesn't address existential dispair. But to my way of thinking, even people who are agonized over world events or "what it all means" -- these people still have to live in and interact with their environment. The more rewarding those interactions are, then, at least for me, the less crushing the "big picture" things become. And in fact, if you can get beyond despair and hopelessness, you might actually become an instrument for change, you might actually be able to do something meaningful about other people's suffering, to somehow put your compassion and angst into action.

Well anyway. That's my 2 cents about this book, for what its worth. I loved it, I credit it with preventing my downward spiral and bringing me back in touch with some of the things I need to do in order to enjoy and appreciate life.

This book provides much more detail about how to overcome your depression-reinforcing *behaviors* than David Burns' excellent books do. It's a nice complement to the Feeling Good titles for anybody trying to make cognitive-behavioral therapy work without a therapist. Expertly written by the leading researchers on behavior therapy for depression. Fills in the 'behavior' part of the cognitive-behavior approach!!

Although written as a fictional account, it is clear this book is the author's own story of low self-esteem, numerous losses, feelings of worthlessness, and near death through eating disorder. Ms. Frazier writes with authority yet with poignancy, not falling into the trap of "poor me." This is definitely a must-read.

This book kept me reading non-stop. I hated when I came to the last page because I wanted to read more about "Helen" and the obsticles she has overcome to be the person she is today.

I picked this up in an airport in Cambodia and was intrigued by finding it in a place with so few books. I was completly engrossed by the details of life for families who faced so bravely the challenges of rapid change and was heart broken by the tragedy of child death and despair faced by the writers great grandmother. The wider context of child murder and post natal depression were researched and vividly related to the personal story. The figures for child mortality are turned into bodies,
faces, blood and tears.

When I first got the book it was frankly out of morbid interest in a sensational story. What I found and got was an incredible tale of life, especially women's lives, during the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.

My Aunt Dorothy is an avid geneologist. She has researched our family history thoroughly and joined a group of descendants of the first pioneers of Minnesota. In order for me to join, too, she compiled a lengthy summary of my heritage in a small notebook. It sounds exciting, but it's really only a list of names, dates and places with nothing of the meat of their daily lives included. It seems that everything else is lost. In reading Ms Busby's story of her own ancestors, I realize how much that "everything" is.

Probably because of the sensational nature of her Grandfather's mother's act, Ms Busby has a central figure around which to build her story, a central theme to give it cohesion. Because she has little to go on with respect to the actual details of her great-grandmother's life, she has researched the period during which the lady lived in great detail. Magazines, pamphlets on pregnancy, childbirth and child care, the social impact of economic depression, of industrialization, of women's place in society, etc. have all been woven into an elaborate social history that tells one woman's story with a vividness not often found for this level of society. We have ample books on Queen Victoria and Prince Edward, Darwin, Kaiser Wilhelm, and other illustrious figures of the period, but the "ordinary" person seems silent. Most are registered, if at all, as birth, marriage and death certifications in parrish registeries or as tombstones--if they managed to avoid a pauper's grave.

Part of the impact of the story is Ms Busby's obvious narrative ability. The story moves along like a novel--in fact she admits that she has "confabulated" a little where definite knowledge was wanting--and pulls the reader along from chapter to chapter like any good murder mystery should. I found it difficult to set aside, even when I knew I needed to sleep for work!

I say, "hooray for Ms Busby." Maybe more of us should start giving our ancestors a voice!

This inspiring book of poetry takes the reader through one woman's struggle with manic depression and her ability to transcend the pain and emotional turmoil the mood disorder renders. The book opens with the poet's stance on poetry itself in "Freedom For the Words" where she states, "Whatever drips down is what I say--." Her last poem, "Just Words," reiterates her approach to poetry. Rolling Waters does not conform to traditional writing standards, which makes her poems so honest and real to the reader. The book follows with a set of poems that are rather dark, such as "Of Madness," "Can't Find My Way Home," "Down on My Knees," and "Help." In the midst of much despair, the imagery of Waters poems is powerful. In both her "dark" and "light" poems, she uses a lot of imagery from nature to describe feeling states. For example, in "Can't Find My Way Home," Waters expresses, "Tripping and falling/ Over snowflakes/ I merge with the nighttime sky;" In her transition from darkness, she writes the poem, "Red Roses." It opens, "I felt a gust of wind/Sailing through the air/ And reaching out its arms/It enveloped me right there." Her latter poems are a recognition of her new perspectives on life that are filled with hope and promise. Especially noteworthy are, "This is Life," and "A Blessed One." I would recommend this book not just to people struggling with manic depression, but people who understand the human condition, with all its ups and downs.

When one first begins to read this book one cannot help but be brought to tears from the harrowing suffering of the poet but ends up with smiles as the dark gives way to light verse! There is HOPE for this illness and this writer found it in God and God's good creations! A MUST READ for those suffering or who know someone who suffers from the illness. Truly Inspirational! My favorite poems are "Down On My Knees", "We Are Family", and "I Climb"! The raw honesty and courage in the writing shows forth in these deeply intense pieces of works! Wow! I have been enriched by reading this poetry collection and I have a better perspective on the illness now. It helps me to understand my love one and what she goes through! Again, a MUST READ!

If you are suffering from post partum mood disorder, this is the book to read. I read a lot of other books but this is the book that really hits home. Very honest. Thank you Slyvia for writing this book.

While it is important for the public to understand the signs, symptoms and risk factors of pregnancy related mood disorders, nothing sends a more compelling message, or inspires sufferers to reach out for help and know they are not alone than a true story of courage, bravery and survival. Sylvia Lasalandra's story powerfully illustrates the suffering, stigma and lack of resources available to women struggling with these illnesses. Thankfully, the tide is finally changing, and Sylvia's unrelenting advocacy is one major reason. You will read this book in one sitting as you will not be able to put it down. Thanks, Sylvia, for joining the fight in such a courageous manner!

I am a child psychiatrist (no longer in training although my review title still refers to me as such), and I work closely with the parents of my patients. I am always looking for books that provide thoughtful accessible guidance for parents. This book is a gem and I will be recommending it often.

While the discussion of mood disorders, diagnosis and treatment, pre-conception, during pregnancy, and postpartum is completely comprehensive, this book doesn't just focus on psychiatric diagnoses. It talks openly and wisely about the emotional adjustment required when one becomes a parent. It provides advice on how couples can argue in a fair manner, to preserve connection during stressful times. It explains how different types of psychotherapies may be useful. This book has a great deal to offer. It is very impressive.

Ruta Nonacs offers a wonderful guide to the sometimes rocky road to becoming a mother. Her book is a practical guide to navigating the emotional ups and downs of infertility, miscarriage, pregnancy, and postpartum.

No one tells you how hard it can be -- I'm a naturally cheerful person who was laid low by an entirely unexpected depression after my first child was born. No one who knew me predicted this. And I was very slow to get help. I wish this book had been available then.

Luckily, I live in Boston and found Dr. Nonacs, who worked with me to get through the blues -- she is an incredibily empathetic care giver. She's also a terrific writer. And she has little kids herself, so she can bring a wide perspective to her work --- as a doctor, a shrink, and a mom.

If you or a woman you care about is suffering with depression, moodiness, a difficult transition to motherhood, or postpartum stress, buy this book. You can read it straight through, or dip into the sections that best apply to your situation. There's also an extensive bibliography/resource section in the back.

I can heartily recommend this book for all new mothers. Her advice on taking care of yourself when you most need to applies to all mothers, not just those with an extra dose of the blues.