Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression, First Edition: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse

I think this book is very helpful and well written. It also comes with a CD with mindfulness exercises. Excellent book!

The authors of this book have devised one of the best strategies for countering bouts of serious depression. Indeed, mindfulness-based therapies have become a hot topic in the field of psychology, and for good reason. The evidence shows that when simple forms of meditation, relaxation, nonjudgmental observation, and acceptance are added to traditional therapies, the results are longer-lasting, and our own research at the University of Pennsylvania supports this (see Newberg and Waldman's forthcoming book, How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist. Taking up a mindfulness practice reduces a patient's need to return to therapy, and the more serious the problem, the more effective this strategy becomes. For the general reader, I recommend The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappinesswhich comes with a CD filled with relaxation and meditation exercises.

We are using this book in my dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) class and it has been extremely helpful in understanding mindfulness. I highly recommend this as an addition to DBT for consumers of borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder. Wonderful!

This is a fantastic book for a variety of audiences: (1) practicing psychologists and therapists who want to learn about a useful -- and empirically supported -- skill for treating depression; (2) people who think may suffer from sad moods -- even if not full-blown depression -- and who want a medicine-free and therapy-free way to feel better; (3) academic researchers who want to know more about varieties of meditation and how to adapt meditation programs to more specific goals; (4) people interested in mindfulness meditation who want to see a psychological angle on why it works so well; (5) academic researchers who want to know more about some theories about why cognitive-behavioral therapy works so well.Whew! So many good things to say:The book actually reads very well -- not just by the minimal standards of academic writing, but by popular standards as well. It's clear, unpretentious and has a surprising amount of drama to it.Many people now try to adapt some kind of mindfulness a la John Kabat-Zinn to a variety of needs for people to overcome this or that disorder, pain, etc. Nearly all assume that one can just take the whole Kabat-Zinn plan and just throw anyone into it. As someone who has taken a class based on the Kabat-Zinn program, and someone who has tried to adapt it to teaching law students and others about negotiation, I can tell you this does not work too well. Among other things, few people really manage to meditate 45 minutes a day.The book explains how the researchers tried to adapt the program to a more specific need: preventing people from getting depressed again after they've been treated. They explain how they changed their thinking about meditation and how to teach it.One of the most beautiful parts of the book is how frankly the authors admit how their first attempts fell short. They also frankly explain how they needed to meditate themselves before they could teach it. Highly recommended!