Books on Depression

The Men At Risk™ library lists pertinent books on Depression. See also books on Death & Dying, Grief, Stress, and Suicide.

• Cousens, Gabriel with Mark Mayell, Depression-Free for Life: An all-natural, 5-step plan to reclaim your zest for living. Over 50 million people in the U.S. suffer from depression, but what many of them don't know is that all depression is not alike - it has multiple and often surprising physical causes. One person's depression may be the result of low levels of serotonin or dopamine while another's may be caused by a deficiency of glutamine. The author delieves that in order to find the effective treatment, we must understand what he calls the "biologically altered brain" which occurs when the brain suffers an emotional or physiological imbalance, and is unable to restore its own biochemistry. This can happen as the result of genetics, inadequate nutrition, environmental and emotional stresses, and alcohol and other drug uses. It is a major contributor to depression, anxiety, adult attention definict disorder, substance abuse, and an assortment of other addictions. This books shares its 90% effective, 5-step approach to healing depression. He teaches readers to customize this holistic program to fit their unique depression profile. The program focuses on rebalancing the "natural drugs of the brain," supplying the diverse range of biochemicals that profoundly influence mental and emotional well-being. William Morrow, 2000, www.harpercollins.com ISBN 0-688-16500-1 Buy This Book!
• Empfield, Maureen and Nicholas Bakalar, Understanding Teenage Depression: A guide to diagnosis, treatment and management. Each year, thousands of American teenagers are diagnosed with clinical depression. If ignored or poorly treated, it can be a devastating illness for adolescents and their families. Drawing on her many years of experience as a psychiatrist working with teenagers, the auto answers the questions parents and teens have about depression, providing detailed information on how depression is diagnosed, identifying the different types of depression, which teenagers are most at risk, assessing the risk of suicide, the drugs used to treat teenage depression, what they are and how they work, when a teenager needs to be hospitalized for depression, and the effect of depression on other teenage problems. This book provides the latest scientific research on this serious condition and the most up-to-date information on its treatment. Incorporating case studies drawn from the author's clinical practice as well as first-person accounts from teenagers, this is a book that anyone who's been touched by this disease - whether parents, teachers, family members or teens themselves - will find invaluable. Henry Holt, www.henryholt.com, 2001, ISBN 0-8050-6761-2, Buy this book! (Also see, The Warning Signs and Major Risk Factors of Teenage Suicide.)
• Huber, Cheri, The Depression Book: Depression as an opportunity for spiritual growth. Do you hate your depression?  Do you wish it would just go away? How we treat ourselves when we are depressed is more important than getting over it. Rejecting ourselves in this moment is not good practice for accepting ourselves in another. This book suggests that resisting depression - or anything else we don't want - actually maintains it, and that compassionate acceptance of our feelings and ourselves leads us to freedom. Keep It Simple Books www.keepitsimplebooks.com 1999 ISBN 0-9636255-6-X Buy This Book!
• Irwin, Cait, Conquering the Beast Within:  How I fought depression and won...and how you can too, one teenager tells her inspiring story. For anyone in the clutchers of the fightening beast that is depression, this book can help. In vivid words and images, the author shares her own compelling story: how she struggled with clinical depression at age fourteen, was hospitalized, sought therapy, found the right medication, and successfully made the long, arduous climb back to good health. This powerful volume shares an inspirational message with all who are waging their own battles with depression: There is a way out. Times Books, 1999 ISBN 0-8129-3247-1 Buy This Book!
• Lynch, John & Christopher Kilmartin, The Pain Behind the Mask:  Overcoming masculine depression. Masculine depression is a vicious syndrome that breeds upon your fear of expectations to "be a man, don't cry, and don't be a wimp."  How many times have you had these "hard knocks" flung at you by others or even by yourself!  This unique book does not portray men as victims:  it describes a man's responsibility and proposes realistic strategies for change. This book focuses on our most destructive social and mental health problem - masculine depression - which goes unrecognized and leads to the violence, abuse and self-neglect that wreak so many men's lives. Haworth Press 1999 ISBN 0-7890-0558-1 Buy This Book!
• Papolos, Demitri, Overcoming Depression, Harper & Row, 1987
• Papolos, Demitri and Janice, Overcoming Depression: The Definitive Resource for Patients and Families Who Live with Depression and Manic-Depression. More than 20 million Americans will suffer an episode of depression or mania during their lifetimes and one in five American families will feel its impact directly. For these people and their families, this book is an essential resource. This newly revised third edition also includes a new section with covers psychiatric therapy in the era of managed care. With up-to-date revisions, this book covers the latest advances made in the field today and is the book for those interested in depression. HarperPerennial, 1997 Buy This Book!
• Preston, Dr. John, You Can Beat Depression: A guide to prevention and recovery. When we lose loved ones, when marriages fall apart, or when we lose our jobs, it is normal to feel sad and upset. And often when people experience painful life events like these, they will say that they feel "depressed". It's important to note that feeling "sad" or "blue" does not necessarily mean that you are depressed. This highly recommended self-help guide has helped tens of thousands of readers. It has now been completely revised and updated. Learn about the different types of depression. Examine the seriousness of your own condition. Learn to use proven self-help procedures. Recognize when you can "do it yourself" and when you can't. Understand about medications for depression. Find the right professional treatment if you need it. Impact Publishers, www.impactpublishers.com, 2001, ISBN 1-886230-40-4 Buy This Book!
• Real, Terrence, I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the secret legacy of male depression. Each year, more than 11 million Americans struggle with depression. Yet, the condition goes mostly undiagnosed - in fact, about 70 percent of sufferers never get help while experts estimate that, with a combination of psychotherapy and medication, between 80 to 90 percent of depressed patients can find long-term relief - if they ask for it. And those who ask for it least are men. Twenty years of experience treating men and their families has convinced the author that depression is a silent epidemic in men - that men hide their condition from family, friends, and themselves to avoid the stigma of depression’s "unmanliness". Problems that we think of as typically male - difficulty with intimacy, workaholism, alcoholism, abusive behavior, and rage - are really attempts to escape depression. And, these escape attempts only hurt the people men love and pass their condition on to their children. The book reveals how men can unearth their pain, heal themselves, restore relationships, and break the legacy of abuse. The author mixes penetrating analysis with compelling tales of his patients and even his own experiences with depression as the son of a violent, depressed father and the father of two young sons. Fireside www.SimonSays.com 1997 Hardback. Buy This Book! See 1998 for paperback version.
• Real, Terrence, I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the secret legacy of male depression. Each year, more than 11 million Americans struggle with depression. Yet, the condition goes mostly undiagnosed - in fact, about 70 percent of sufferers never get help while experts estimate that, with a combination of psychotherapy and medication, between 80 to 90 percent of depressed patients can find long-term relief - if they ask for it. And those who ask for it least are men. Twenty years of experience treating men and their families has convinced the author that depression is a silent epidemic in men - that men hide their condition from family, friends, and themselves to avoid the stigma of depression’s "unmanliness". Problems that we think of as typically male - difficulty with intimacy, workaholism, alcoholism, abusive behavior, and rage - are really attempts to escape depression. And, these escape attempts only hurt the people men love and pass their condition on to their children. The book reveals how men can unearth their pain, heal themselves, restore relationships, and break the legacy of abuse. The author mixes penetrating analysis with compelling tales of his patients and even his own experiences with depression as the son of a violent, depressed father and the father of two young sons. Fireside www.SimonSays.com 1998 The paperback version. Buy This Book!
• Slagle, Priscilla, Way Up from Down: Banish depression & low moods forever with an easy to follow program of B vitamins and amino acids, St Martins, 1987
• Smith, Jeffery, Where the Roots Reach the Water:  A personal & natural history of melancholia. The author was living in Missoula, Montana, and was into his eighth year as a psychiatric case manager when his own struggles with clinical depression began. Eventually, all his prescribed antidepressant medications proved ineffective. Unlike many such personal accounts, this book describes what happened after Smith decided to give them up. Trying to learn how to make a life with his illness, he sets out to get at the essence of - using the old term for depression - melancholia. What he learns utterly transforms his life. Deftly woven into his "personal history" is a "natural history" of this ancient illness - a natural history that surveys, as we might expect, recent neurobiological research and speculation about depression's evolutionary purpose. But the author also draws on centuries of art, writing and medical treatises inspired by the illness and its very near kin, the melancholic temperament. His imaginative natural history of melancholia touches on mythology, anthropology, religious history, love and sex, philosophy and our relationship with landscapes. The book is a provacative and highly original memoir that recovers for us a trove of stories and ideas that, while long obscurred, can teach us how we in this new "Age of Depression" might acclimate ourselves to melancholia's sundry lives. North Point Press 1999

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