Women's Moods, Women's Minds: What Every Woman Must Know about Hormones, the Brain, and Emotional Health

I have just finished reading Sichel and Driscoll's book, which I selected based on the quality of journal citations from their bibliography. If you are a woman diagnosed with unipolar depression whose doctors and mental health care providers have ignored your full reproductive history, I strongly advise you to pay close attention to Sichel and Driscoll's many case histories of women with undiagnosed bipolar II. These histories show many Bipolar II's exquisite hormonal sensitivities manifest as bad reactions to birth control pills as well as hypomania triggered by antidepressants, but only at certain points in the hormonal cycle. See if the other symptoms and events (agitation, irritability, PPD) sound familiar to you. For any such woman considering perimenopausal or postmenopausal hormone replacement therapy, this book could be literally lifesaving.

As a clinical health psychologist in an OB/GYN facility as well as a survivor of a recent life "earthquake" - I found this book to be an enormously validating experience both personally and professionally.The overwhelming majority of my patients are postpartum women who are suffering from a mood disorder which is embarrassingly poorly understood, and are often told to "snap out of it" at a time when "they should be happy." The authors of this book offer an explanation for postpartum depression from a biochemical standpoint, and thus relieve women from the shame that they are somehow doing "the mother thing" incorrectly.However, despite the fact that the book focuses on women's hormonal events such as pregnancy, postpartum, and menopause, this book explains women's depression from a view that is significant to any woman, regardless of her status of ever having been pregnant. In my estimation, this is the most powerful and most broadly applicable benefit of this book. The authors regard mood disorders as the result of brain "dysregulation" - a state which exists following repetitive and/or extreme stress to the brain, and based on an excess of stress hormones or "chemical loading." The dysregulation occurs when the brain "relearns" the adaptive stress mode as being the normal mode of operation, and gets "stuck" like a needle in a record groove which can't quite jump out on its own.The book's salvation - the NURSE program in conjunction with antidepressants, may be simplistic in some cases, but it's the best by far that we have to offer right now, and quite possibly the solution which leads to the quickest relief of physical and emotional symptoms. Therefore, I have recommended this book wholeheartedly to my patients as well as to those spouses/family members/significant others who need to better understand what their loved ones are facing.

As someone who is recovering from severe Postpartum Depression and postpartum OCD, this book was invaluable. Unlike other books that list symptoms and offer coping skills, this book actually shares the stories of women who have suffered through the hell that PPD can be. No matter how many times I'd been told "this is part of the illness, it will get better," I had a difficult time believing that until I read the story of Pamela, who suffered from postpartum OCD. I couldn't believe what I was reading! Parts of her story were so familiar to me that it was frightening; but I took comfort in the fact that I'm not alone, that this illness is VERY REAL. It is so difficult to suffer from mental illness, especially when no one around you can see the pain you are in. You just look "normal." For me, this book has been a wonderful tool to help educate my family about the severity of what I have been through. They had a better understanding after reading real stories that paralled mine, versus reading lists of symptoms that simply defined depression. A must read for women who suffer from major mood disorders and for their families, too.

I found this book to be extremely helpful, visionary and most substantive. From a physician's point of view this is an exceptional book bringing psychiatry into mainstream medicine in a remarkably simple and clear presentation of complex biological and psychological issues to help foster an understanding of how simple but repeated stressors can lead to significant dysfunction. I will be recommending this exceptional book to my patients, males and females, their families and all my friends. Well done Sichel and Driscoll for what I see as the first book integrating so many of the vital factors contributing to depression!

This book was recommended to me by a therapist who works with postpartum women experiencing depression. It is a gift to anyone who has suffered mood swings, depression, crying fits, or irrational anger and wondered why. No, it isn't excuses, it's explanations that make sense and help to alleviate the guilt and shame that come with such feelings. It is written in an accessible style for what is essentially a medical/psychological text. I intend to give it to all of my women friends, and even a few men I know who've suffered with depression. Recommended reading.