Depression Is Contagious: How the Most Common Mood Disorder Is Spreading Around the World and How to Stop It

Dr. Yapko has contributed, both to the field he represents, and those who are fortunate enough to initiate these concepts into their own lives, and the lives of others around them. One caveat: many of the ideas will fly in the face of what you've always "Known" about depression; with a willingness to examine, and then embrace the ideas in this book, your life will certainly be enhanced.

The premise of this book is that good, healthy relationships prevent and cure depression. Good relationships do not come about magically but through the application of skills, like impulse control, and appropriate values, like commitment and honesty. Dr. Yapko does a great job of clearly explaining all the relationship issues that need to be understood to form strong healthy relationships, from setting clear boundaries, to using impulse control, to setting and adjusting expectations. Yapko also discusses how people who are depressed tend to take actions that make things worse, like ruminating and isolating themselves from other people. In some ways the most valuable advice from this book is on how to enter into a good relationship, or how to know when you should commit for the long term or make a graceful exit. I wish there were some way to extract this information and get it before people who are entering relationships because, in reality, the process of acquiring the knowledge and understanding needed of another before you know who they really are takes time, and usually most people make the commitment before they are fully informed. I would recommend those particular sections for my children as they grow up and start to entertain serious relationships. Yapko makes the case for good relationships and against the taking of prescription drugs, except for the most extreme cases, to resolve depression. I agree with him for the most part. One curious statement made by Yapko is that, although we know that exercise can help treat depression, we don't know how. I thought it was well known that exercise releases feel-good hormones and also aids in good sleep; it's odd that Yapko wouldn't know this. In any event, I think this book could have been better titled. The current title gives the impression that the book deals with depression on some international, pandemic level, which it doesn't. A more accurate title (pay attention publisher) may be Curing the Depression Bug: How Strong Healthy Relationships Can Prevent and Treat Depression. I am afraid that those suffering from depression, who may greatly benefit from the book, may bypass it because of its globalization, pandemic sounding title.

This latest book from Dr. Yapko is a gem. He briefly but methodically reviews the evidence from the fields of genetics, neurochemistry, psychopharmacology, and clinical psychology in order to provide compelling evidence that the more we know about the biology of depression, the more important the psychology of depression becomes. Specifically, he focuses on how depression has been growing in prevalence steadily decade by decade and highlights how social forces play a pivotal role in this increase. Changes in technology affect us all daily, as do changing social expectations for friendship, dating, marriage and even business relationships. He points out in a variety of ways how important good relationships are to feeling good and how often hurtful relationships are the pathway into depression. He uses his clinical experience as well as ample research to emphasize that developing the skills necessary for building good relationships is vital in helping reduce depression and even prevent depression in our children. This last point is especially meaningful to me because the last thing I want to do is pass my depressive tendencies on to my kids! Dr. Yapko identifies many of the key skills that go into building and maintaining healthy relationships, and actually teaches the reader how to develop them. It has already made a big difference in my relationships, I'm happy to say. I wish everybody would read this book so they'd better grasp that depression affects more than just the depressed person and that drug treatments alone can't help people learn the skills Dr. Yapko teaches. I'm so glad one of my friends gave me this book!

In his book Ph.D. Michael Yapko brings us up to date with what doctors know about depression going into 2010, here are some highlights. 1, Humans beings desire positive relationships with other people more than anything else. 2, The real tragedy of the boomer yuppies is their relentless focus on financial net worth while their social net worth is close to bankruptcy. 3, A sure sign of depression is someone talking negative about other people. 4, As people mature ( some never do ) they begin to value family and friends more that money, houses, cars and big 401K's. 5, If you want to be happy focus on your social net worth!

So for those of you that are stuck in the old thinking that you are helpless to do anything about your depression, you are going to have to wake up and take on the responsibility yourselves of getting out of depression instead of thinking you can find the magic combination of pills that will do it for you. Dr. Yapko has added significantly to the psychological literature that is changing the way we think about depression with this new book. Kay Redfield Jamison move over! The day of treating depression as a brain disease will soon over and Dr. Yapko is courageously leading the way, showing people how they can get out of their depression by getting into better habits of relating with their fellow man, better ways of understanding and accepting their nearest and dearest, better habits of thinking, better habits of behavior. His new book gives you helpful exercises and personal reminder lists to keep you on track. According to Dr. Yapko, we don't really know how to do relationships anymore. In the last couple of generations we have turned relationships into nothing more than meeting our needs. Dr. Yapko shows us how do change this wrong-headed thinking about our relationships so we are not just meeting our needs, we are transforming our very lives. A.B. Curtiss, board-certified cognitive behavioral therapist and author of Depression is a Choice and Brainswitch Out of Depression.