Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You

Once in a while you come across a book on a very important subject that actually makes sense from the first page to the last page ... and this is one of these books. If you've suffered from depression or are currently depressed or perhaps depression by a loved one or a co-worker has affected you, then this book will help. How? Well, it shows that many depressive trends are based on thought patterns and the author analyses how depression develops and continues to hunt individuals throughout their lives. Then the author offers effective solutions how to avoid such trends and change traps that may lead to depression. Another book that I found extremely helpful and which also focuses on behavioral patterns as well as the roots of depression and solutions to avoid it and be healed from depression is Dietmar Scherf's I LOVE ME: Avoiding & Overcoming Depression.

The author is quick the point out (and he is correct) that this book will not improve or cure depression by itself. You need professional help for that. Instead, the purpose of this book (which it magnificently addresses) is to describe what the depressed person and the depressed person's family and friends need to be doing to provide the maximum likelihood of overcoming depression. That's a reasonable promise and premise for a book on this important subject, and you can begin to overcome your ignorance (and the harm it can bring) by reading this book and acting on its advice.First, the bad news. Depression is increasing. Worse still, the younger someone is, the more likely that the person will experience depression sometime. Even worse, many people are undiagnosed, and suffer alone with their affliction. Second, the good news. Around 70 percent of all those suffering from depression will improve with either drug therapy or mental health treatments. Those who get both do even better. Third, more bad news. Depression tends to recur for many people.The voice addressing these issues is an expert one. He is a psychotherapist who runs a community health center. More importantly, he has suffered from depression himself. I doubt if you can get more direct access to what depression is all about than from Richard O'Connor. I admire his caring to share so much of his own pain with us, and respect him enormously for this gift he has given us all.Depression is currently under reevaluation. No single paradigm seems to capture all of its elements. Undoubtedly, an improved scientific model for it will emerge. There are signs that it can have roots in disturbed relations between Mother and child, family dysfunction, possibly genetic disorders of brain chemistry (like using up seratonin too rapidly), other traumas, and poor thinking habits. Who knows what else may turn up? Many people try to deal with this problem too much on their own. Families often put up with the depressed person's behavior, not knowing what else to do. Others reject the depressed person, which will usually make the situation worse. O'Connor lays out common sense guidelines that should make a diference: for depressed people, for those who care about them, and for those who treat them. The author sees depression as a disease and as a social problem, "an illness to be treated professionally and a failure of adaptation that we must overcome through self-determinination." He outlines important principles for the depressed person: (1) Feel your feelings (depression is the suppression of feelings -- acknowledging those feelings often causes depression to improve). (2) Realize that nothing comes out of the blue (your depressed state has a root cause that you should look for in an event or situation). (3) Challenge your depressed thinking by questioning your assumptions, especially ones that center on meaningless perfectionism. (4)

O'Connor is one of the best writers on depression I've read in 30 years as both a mental health professional and a sufferer. He weaves together research, theory, case examples and his own experience with depression in such a warm, down-to -earth way that reading this on depressed days, I am comforted that it really IS possible to undo depression. Self-help exercises are included. His main point -- that whatever "official" therapy we take in terms of counseling or medication, change is really about noticing our depressive thought and behavior patterns and working to change them, is what it's all really about in my experience. He acknowledges the pain and hard work in this -- again, one of the unique aspects of his writing is its warmth and tone of friendship and fellowship for the journey.