Outsmarting Depression: Surviving the Crossfire of the Mental Health Wars

Outsmarting Depression: Surviving The Corssfire Of The Mental Health Wars is a straightforward self-help guide by journalist and mental health advocate Debbie Thurman, herself a "psychiatric survivor" of Major Depressive Disorder. Taking a sharp stance against the common belief that depression is caused solely by an imbalance of brain chemicals, Outsmarting Depression does not deny the role of medication in treating the depressed, but focuses on all-too-common cases where medicine is insufficient or even superfluous, and the roots of the problem lie in emotional or spiritual issues, childhood experiences, or a lifestyle that is in dire need of change. Teaching the reader how to distinguish biological from emotional/spiritual depression, how to avoid being trapped between warring health practitioners, and offering the straight scoop on what leading professionals truly think of depression treatments, Outsmarting Depression is highly recommended for anyone struggling with depression as a persistent problem or worse.

Debbie Thurman's work, Outsmarting Depression, captures that niggling feeling that the seemingly automatic process of prescribing anti-depressants is not all there is or should be to better mental health, as much as the advertising of Pharmaceutical companies would like you to believe. Well researched, and with personal insight, Thurman takes us carefully through the options of learning just how ineffective a single and not well-documented way of treating mental health can be. She leaves open the door for the various levels of depression to be addressed with medication and other outlets, but for the vast majority of those who suffer less psychotic forms of depression she offers much more than just cheerleading. Thurman proffers viewpoints from a host of professionals whom deal with treatment in various ways, and this allows the reader to examine that niggling feeling that just popping a pill isn't the answer to curing depression. With many of the negative side effects of current medications well reported, (and here Thurman tells us many medications are prescribed to combat side effects of other prescribed medications) consumers aren't educated as to how the industry works. Thurman pulls no punches about this, and in doing so, stirs deeper thought and hopefully much discussion from her pages.Thurman's subtitle, "Surviving the Crossfire of the Mental Health Wars" is illustrative of the consumers' outside viewpoint in the pharmaceutical business, where television and print advertising tell us to just ask your doctor if it's right for you, never mind they don't tell you exactly what the medication is for in the advertisement. In the pages of "OUTSMARTING DEPRESSION" folks with and without depression will find enlightenment, as to how to take charge of that sense that we are more than just biological beings, as some in the Mental Health industry might have us believe. But Thurman does allow for the biological aspects, which makes her argument all the stronger. Highly recommeded for better mental health, or just for putting into words that niggling feeling that the pursuits of mental health lean heavily to the Big Business of Mental Health.