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Creators have trouble maintaining meaning. Creating is one of the ways they endeavor to maintain meaning. In the act of creation, they lay a veneer of meaning over meaninglessness and sometimes produce work that helps others maintain meaning.  This is why creating is such a crucial activity in the life of a creator: It is one of the ways, and often the most important way, that [they] manage to make life feel meaningful. Not creating is depressing because [they are] not making meaning when [they are] not creating. ...The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person's Path Through Depression - by Eric Maisel, PhD related article :...Depression and Creativity by Douglas Eby related page:...existential dread

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Although our thoughts influence mood, behavior and physical reactions, positive thinking is not a solution to life's problems. Most people who are anxious, depressed or angry can tell you that "just thinking positive thoughts" is not that simple. In fact, if we do try to think only positive thoughts when we have a strong mood, we may miss important signals that something is wrong.

Cognitive therapy suggests instead that people consider as many different angles on a problem as possible.  Looking at the situation from many different sides -- positive and negative and neutral -- can lead to new conclusions and solutions. ...from book : Mind Over Mood: Change How  You Feel by Changing the Way You Think  - by Dennis Greenberger, Christine Padesky

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At first I thought what I was feeling was just exhaustion, but with it came an overriding sense of panic that I had never felt before with fatigue. Rowan kept crying and I suddenly began to fear the moment when Chris would bring her back to me. I started to experience a sick sensation in my stomach; it was as if a vise was tightening around my chest. Instead of the nervous anxiety that often accompanies panic, a feeling of quiet devastation overcame me. I hardly moved. Sitting on my bed, I let out a deep, slow, guttural wail. I wasn't simply emotional or weepy like I had been told I might be.

This was something quite different. When PMS made me introspective or melancholy or when the pressures of life made me gloomy, I knew these feelings wouldn't last forever. But this was sadness of a shockingly different magnitude. It felt as if it would never go away. Brooke Shields > from her book Down Came the Rain : My Journey Through Postpartum Depression -- by Brooke Shields

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Judy Collins' new book, Sanity & Grace: A Journey of Suicide, Survival, and Strength explores how her life changed forever in January 1992, when her only son, Clark Taylor, committed suicide. He was 33 years old... Collins has done extensive research on the subject, and the books she suggests for survivors are wide-ranging. The singer advises suicide survivors to join groups of others like themselves. "I starting going to a survivors' group and heard other stories, and I told them my story," she remembers. "I learned from that tool. Suicide is the result of a disease and should be treated as such." A psychologist named Edwin Shneidman has provided guidance for Collins. Dr. Shneidman is the founder of the American Association of Suicidology, which aims to understand and prevent suicide. His case studies are beautifully written and deeply compassionate. Suicide, says Shneidman, is the result of psychache, or a state of "intolerable psychological pain."

His book The Suicidal Mind, profoundly influenced the singer. "I just love Edwin," Collins says. "After Clark died and I was trying to cope with the grief, a friend got me his phone number and I picked up the courage to call him in Los Angeles. We've become good friends." Collins, a recovering alcoholic, notices how suicide is often linked to depression worsened by drugs and alcohol. She advises keeping a journal to "get out the feelings and ideas." Despite his attempts, her son never overcame his alcoholism. "When you're recovering, stay clear of alcohol and drugs. I need my mind to be clear and I try to create a network of friendships and support systems. I also believe in a healthy diet, exercise, and meditation. You have to also depend upon God or your Higher Power." Collins says emphatically, "Before you take your own life, you have to try everything else." > from NPR story > related pages: alcohol resources articles sites books.... depression resources : sites

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Tanya Tucker on the blues Any entertainer will tell you that when you get on that tour bus, you sometimes feel you are leaving the problems of the real world behind. You're out there on the road where problems with the plumbing at your house, or the lawn that needs mowing, or the important call you haven't returned are miles away. They'll usually be waiting for you upon your return, but still, it's out of sight, out of mind. But the one thing you can't outrun on the road is the blues. The blues travel fast. They'll catch up. Getting up onstage and feeling the love of your fans goes a long ways toward holding the blues at bay out there on the road.

So does getting a call from an old friend, listening to the radio and hearing a great song, or discovering a new artist whose music you love. The sound of rain on the bus's roof always cheers me up. Sometimes, if it's raining when I come in off the road, I linger on the bus a little longer -- not to stay out of the rain, just to hear that pitter-patter sound on the roof. But other times you have to reach down inside yourself and really come up with a powerful solution to the blues. In my case, inspiration comes from my family. My children, of course, always bring me up. A hug, a smile, an "I love you, Mom." And then, I can always look to my parents, to their lives and strengths. > book: 100 Ways to Beat the Blues : An Uplifting Book for Anyone Who's Down -- by Tanya Tucker

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Samuel H. Barondes. Better Than Prozac: Creating the Next Generation of Psychiatric Drugs
[Publishers Weekly:] In this readable, upbeat treatise, Barondes, a professor of psychiatry and neurobiology, reviews how the advent of powerful and versatile psychiatric drugs has revolutionized both the treatment and the understanding of mental illness, and assesses the prospects for further advances.

Andy Behrman. Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania

Douglas Bloch. When Going Through Hell, Don't Stop!: A Survivors' Guide to Overcoming Anxiety and Clinical Depression -- review by Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Reinventing Medicine: "Douglas Bloch has written a triumphant, poignant account of his successful battle with a depression which nearly took his life. He lays bare his soul and reveals how he came through."

Stephen Braun. The Science of Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Mood
"Writing from a solid scientific basis and from personal experience, Braun asserts that happiness and unhappiness are natural conditions. Further, he argues that both happiness and depression have positive aspects: the former as a motivator, the latter as a warning. If attended to and acted on intelligently, both can help one lead a more productive and understanding life. "Learning can't be put in a pill," Braun says, for we learn from experience and the interpretation of it. Moreover, submerging feelings can lead to dangers as severe as those risked by the rare persons who feel no pain. Much is still unknown about the causes of happiness and depression, but he cautions against trusting drug company researchers' claims about the antidepressants and such that they discover." [Booklist review]

Richard Carlson  You Can Feel Good Again : Common-Sense Therapy for Releasing Depression and Changing Your Life

Doc Childre and Deborah Rozman, PhD. Overcoming Emotional Chaos: Eliminate anxiety, lift depression and create security in your life

Nell Casey. Unholy Ghost : Writers on Depression
"It's a foretaste of death. It's a trip to the country of nothingness. Reality loses its substance and becomes ghostly, transparent, unbelievable," such is a description of depression by Susanna Kaysen, one of 22 writers in Unholy Ghost. ... Several authors have memories of being depressed from a very young age. From before the age of eight, Chase Twichell recalls, "I knew I wasn't normal - at school there was clear glass between me and the playground, me and my young fellow humans. ...  [excerpts from reader review]*

Lana R. Castle, Peter C. Whybrow. Bipolar Disorder Demystified: Mastering the Tightrope of Manic Depression
"Bipolar disorder presents constant challenges. Lana Castle confronts these challenges... and offers personal wisdom in relaying her own story." Nancy Rosenfeld, author of New Hope for People with Bipolar Disorder

M. A. Copeland, et al. The Depression Workbook : A Guide for Living with Depression and Manic Depression
This bestselling workbook provides interactive exercises that help readers take responsibility for their own wellness and teach essential coping skills, such as tracking and controlling moods, building a support system, increasing self-confidence and self-esteem, avoiding conditions that can exacerbate mood swings, and using relaxation, diet, and exercise to stabilize moods.A major feature of the second edition is a new chapter that details a step-by-step process to help readers develop their own plan for managing symptoms and staying well. [amazon.com]

A. B. Curtiss. Depression is a Choice: Winning the Battle Without Drugs
The moment I felt depressed, it never occurred to me to do anything else but be depressed. The progression from a feeling of depression to being a depressed person was a foregone conclusion that I never questioned. Depression always ends. Not because of Prozac. Not because of psychotherapy. Not because of psychoanalysis or shock treatments. Depression always ends because it is in the very nature of depression to end. The only question is, how can we get it to end sooner, the way we want it to, instead of later, which we hate? The answer is that we have to learn to think about depression in a different way.  ... Ten years ago, as a result of my work as a cognitive behavioral therapist, my struggles with my own severe mood swings and my experiences with patients who came in for therapy, I discovered the real cause of depression. I haven't "been depressed" since that time.
from Chapter 1 excerpt on author site www.abcurtiss.com

Richard Davidson  Anxiety, Depression, and Emotion  "..presents both psychological and biological implications of research for psychiatrists and psychologists."

J. Raymond DePaulo, Leslie Alan Horvitz. Understanding Depression : What We Know and What You Can Do About It -- "No one system, organ, or other factor is responsible for depression - not one steroid, not one gene, not one neurotransmitter, and not a lesion on one side of the brain or the other. What we seem to have is... a stew with lots of different and exotic ingredients." So explains DePaulo (How to Cope with Depression), psychiatry professor and director of the Affective Mental Disorders Clinic at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, in this thoughtful, exhaustive reference on depression for general readers. [Publishers Weekly]

"Understanding Depression gives coherent form to modern science's confused wisdom about the illness, and does so in an accessible, intelligent way." -Andrew Solomon, author of the National Book Award winner The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Patty Duke. A Brilliant MadnessI'd be less than honest if I said that manic depression is not part of my life today. For one thing, it is my genetic heritage, and that never goes away. Second, I am who I am, with behavior patterns that have been going on for years. Just taking a pill doesn't mean I'm going to become a different person. The whole world doesn't immediately turn rosy. So I keep working really hard to break behaviors I don't like in myself. I practice. It's like playing the piano. I practice. I screw up. I practice again.

Dalia Eliav. Goodbye Depression : Take Control of Your Life and Get Rid of Depression A Practical Guide Based on Personal Experience -- "Unable to live with depression? Medical treatment brings no solution? Self-help books written by doctors do not help? That is precisely where the author stood after years of trying to get rid of depression in the usual ways. So she took matters into her own hands, fought for her life and won it back. This is how she did it and how you can do it too. ... Dalia Eliav is a mathematician and a teacher, a former competition swimmer and tennis champion and still a very active athlete. Her motivation for writing the book is the firm belief that what she has learned can surely help other people who suffer from depression and the desire to share it with them.'

Maureen Empfield et al.  Understanding Teenage Depression: A Guide to Diagnosis, Treatment, and Management

Jan Fawcett M.D.  New Hope for People With Bipolar Disorder
The book delivers another powerful message, both explicitly and implicitly, that patients need not be defined by their illness. Every one of them is a unique person with their own personality, life experience, strengths, and weaknesses. The authors send this message by using bipolar illness as a springboard to examine various aspects of the human condition--from suggestions for managing stress, advice about sexual happiness, and optimum experience ("flow," or total involvement in life) to strategies for enhancing self-awareness and achieving job satisfaction to a nicely accessible explanation of how cognitive psychotherapy works. [from Foreword by Frederick K. Goodwin, M.D.]

James Gardner, MD, Arthur Bell, PhD. Overcoming Anxiety, Panic, and Depression : New Ways to Regain Your Confidence
[reader:] "All the modern medical treatments are described clearly and in detail, including the brain chemistry background needed to understand the logic of anti-depressant and anti-anxiety drugs. I was also impressed that equal time was given to alternative treatments that have some proven validity, such as herbal remedies, nutritional supplements, traditional chinese medicine, and homeopathy. In addition, how psychological counseling, behavioral therapy, and biofeedback can help was explained, as well as many useful suggestions on what each person can do themselves to face anxiety and depression with confidence."

E. Jane Garland. Depression Is the Pits, but I'm Getting Better : A Guide for Adolescents

John D. Gartner. The Hypomanic Edge : The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America
"Successful entrepreneurs are not just braggarts. They are highly creative people who quickly generate a tremendous number of ideas -- some clever, others ridiculous. Their “flight of ideas,” jumping from topic to topic in a rapid energized way, is a sign of hypomania."
> John D. Gartner, Ph.D. is a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University Medical School

Frederick K. Goodwin M.D., Kay Redfield Jamison. Manic-Depressive Illness

Dennis Greenberger, Christine A. Padesky. Mind Over Mood

Constance Hammen, PhD. Depression
[author is a Professor at UCLA, affiliated with the Mood Disorders Clinic at the Neuropsychiatric Institute]
[Amazon.com review:]  " Introduction to how people experience depression. Includes up-to-date research evidence on the causes and available treatment. Extensively referenced."

David Healy. Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression.  "Healy confirms his status as one longtime thorn in the side of big drug companies, recounting how he was initially enthusiastic about SSRIs but eventually grew concerned about their side effects." -- Psychology Today

D. Jablow Hershman Manic Depression and Creativity

Cheri Huber. The Depression Book: Depression As an Opportunity for Spiritual Growth

Cait Irwin. Conquering the Beast Within :  How I Fought Depression and Won.. and How You Can, Too

Kay Redfield Jamison, MD. Touched With Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament
The relation between madness and genius is a fascinating subject, and Jamison (Psychiatry/Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) has a rich lode of firsthand observers to quote from: Byron, Coleridge, van Gogh, Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Virginia Woolf, and many more, all of whom offer spellbinding words about their bouts with manic depression.  The basic argument here is "not that all writers and artists are depressed, suicidal, or manic. It is, rather, that a greatly disproportionate number of them are; that the manic-depressive and artistic temperaments are, in many ways, overlapping ones; and that the two temperaments are causally related to one another."   [From Kirkus Reviews]

Kay Redfield Jamison, MD. Night Falls Fast : Understanding Suicide
"Suicide is a particularly awful way to die: the mental suffering leading up to it is usually prolonged, intense, and unpalliated," writes Kay Redfield Jamison. "There is no morphine equivalent to ease the acute pain, and death not uncommonly is violent and grisly." Jamison has studied manic-depressive illness and suicide both professionally--and personally. She first planned her own suicide at 17; she attempted to carry it out at 28. Now professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, she explores the complex psychology of suicide, especially in people younger than 40: why it occurs, why it is one of our most significant health problems, and how it can be prevented. [Amazon.com summary]

Kay Redfield Jamison, MD. An Unquiet Mind : A Memoir of Moods and Madness

Miriam Kaufman. Overcoming Teen Depression: A Guide for Parents

Susanna Kaysen. Girl, Interrupted      (basis of film starring Winona Ryder; Angelina Jolie; Whoopi Goldberg; etc) // from the book: "The more I thought about it, the more absurd it became. I couldn't take all those rules seriously... I was the one person who had trouble with the rules. Everybody else accepted them. Was this a mark of my madness?... Was I crazy or was I right? In 1967, this was a hard question to answer. Even twenty-five years later, it's a hard question to answer."

Jeff D. Kazmierczak Neural Misfire: A True Story of Manic-Depression "...presents a brave and brutally honest novel based on his own true story. He allows the reader to live the actions, dialogue, and thoughts of the bipolar protagonist from his illness onset to initial treatment. Mr. Kazmierczak began writing.. a year after he was first treated, at age 20."

Terence A. Ketter, M.D. Advances in Treatment of Bipolar Disorder
Terence Ketter, MD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford said he became interested in the link between mental illness and creativity after noticing that patients who came through the bipolar clinic, despite having problems, were extraordinarily bright, motivated people who “tended to lead interesting lives.” In 2002 he published a study that showed healthy artists were more similar in personality to individuals with bipolar disorder (the majority of whom were on medication) than to healthy people in the general population. Ketter said he believes that bipolar patients’ creativity stems from their mobilizing energy that results from negative emotion to initiate some sort of solution to their problems. “In this case, discontent is the mother of invention,” he said. > from Stanford University School of Medicine press release 11/8/05

Susan Klebanoff et al.  Ups & Downs: How to Beat the Blues and Teen Depression

Susan Kolodny. The Captive Muse : On Creativity and Its Inhibition [Publisher:] "Challenging the view that making art is typically linked to psychopathology, she demonstrates how our internal conflicts interfere with rather than foster creative work. She explains the resistances that crop up along he way and the inner voices by which artists and writers are encouraged or beset. She shows how who we are helps to determine what happens when we revise and how the stages of psychological development contribute to an eventual ability or inability to do creative work. She quotes from interviews with six productive artists and writers who speak candidly about their work, then points out instructive differences between the unimpeded and those who become blocked or stalled."   author site: thecaptivemuse.com

Harold S. Koplewicz, M.D.  More Than Moody: Recognizing and Treating Adolescent Depression

Peter D. Kramer.  Listening to Prozac
"Much of what we value - our understanding of beauty, profundity, even romance - has been crafted by melancholics. Perhaps we were not so wrong in the '60s when we imagined sadness might contain a germ of resistance to a culture thriving on competition, consumption and celebrity. Today, in a time when people demand serenity as if it were the human condition, one cheer for melancholy hardly seems excessive." Psychiatrist Peter D. Kramer  [from his article: "Why I'm in Favor of Sadness" Self magazine, July, 2001]

Peter D. Kramer. Against Depression
Most [people in the audience] understood van Gogh to have suffered severe depression. His illness, they thought, conferred special vision. ... they maintained this 19th-century belief, that depression reveals essence to those brave enough to face it. By this account, depression is more than a disease -- it has a sacred aspect. Others took mood disorder to be a heavy dose of the artistic temperament, so that any application of antidepressants is finally cosmetic, remolding personality into a more socially acceptable form. For them, depression was less than a disease. These attributions stood in contrast to my own belief, that depression is neither more nor less than a disease, but disease simply and altogether.

Raymond W. Lam. Seasonal Affective Disorder and Beyond : Light Treatment for Sad and Non-Sad Conditions

Joseph Ledoux. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life

David Lester. Katie's Diary: Unlocking the Mystery of Suicide

David Lester. Making Sense of Suicide: An In-Depth Look At Why People Kill Themselves

Eric Maisel. The Van Gogh Blues
This is not a book about van Gogh.  He appears, disappears,  reappears, but he never settles down as our central subject or object.  Rather, this is a book about all creators: about you, me, painters in Tokyo, biologists in Moscow, novelists in Egypt.  It is about who we are, what we do, and why we get depressed.

Martha Manning. Undercurrents : A Life Beneath the Surface
[reader review:] "38 year old wife/mom/psychotherapist/writer shares her journal, which details
her descent into depression, her encounters with therapists, her eventual hospitalization and in-patient
ECT therapy... and her slow climb from numbness back to the realm of the living, able to appreciate
and enjoy what life has to offer.

Fiona Marshall, Peter Cheevers.  Positive Options for Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) : Self-Help and Treatment

Mark D. Miller, Charles F. Reynolds. Living Longer Depression Free: A Family Guide to Recognizing,
Treating, and Preventing Depression in Later Life
[Library Journal:]  Both geriatric psychiatrists at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, Miller and Reynolds here share their 20-plus years' experience of working with older people suffering from depression. As the authors remind readers, the incidence of depression significantly rises with age, and suicide, highly associated with depression, is five times more common in later life. This important, thorough work covers the various forms of and medical reasons for depression and how it's related to Alzheimer's and other diseases; reviews how to evaluate and treat depression, including medication and psychotherapy; and presents numerous strategies for staying free of depression for the long term.

Francis Mark Mondimore. Bipolar Disorder: A Guide for Patients and Families
   "Bipolar disorder is a mood disorder that affects about two percent of the population. Such famous politicians, writers, artists, and musicians as Winston Churchill, George Frederick Handel, Lord Byron, Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allan Poe, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Vincent van Gogh had bipolar disorder, but most persons affected by bipolar disorder are just ordinary people who want nothing more than to get back to their everyday lives after they or their family members have been diagnosed with the illness. This book is written for them." -- from the Preface
   In this book for persons with bipolar disorder and their families, Dr. Frank Mondimore offers a comprehensive, practical, compassionate guide to the symptoms, diagnosis, treatment and causes of this potentially devastating psychiatric illness, formerly known as "manic-depression." He offers practical advice for getting the most out of the various treatments that are now available -- from medication, psychotherapy, and electroconvulsive treatment to new approaches such as St. John's wort and transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Deborah Norville Back on Track : How to Straighten Out Your Life When It Throws You a Curve  (audio)
"Have you ever shoved food in your face when you were hurt or angry and hated yourself at the time for doing it? Have you ever felt severely depressed? Have you ever had the sense that life is just a series of days strung together? You just plod through them and at some point it all ends? You were having a crisis. Just like me. When I left my job as co-anchor on NBC's Today show, I went through a major tailspin. I was paralyzed by depression. There were weeks I never left my apartment or even got dressed. And yet.. I looked inside ... and found within the way to get 'back on track.' The steps may seem simple, but taking them is not. What I hope to do with this book, by sharing my story and that of many other courageous women who put crisis behind them, is to encourage you to try walking." Deborah Norville

Henri J. M. Nouwen. The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom
Certainly one of the most compelling of Nouwen' s books. It's power lies in its strictly personal nature, a private journal not intended for publication. For eight years it sat in a drawer in Nouwen's room, shared only with closest friends. Over the years friends urged that it be released for publication. Nouwen resisted throughout, insisting that it was too personal. Fortunately, only months before his death, he yielded to importunings and after the necessary editing released the journal to his publisher. The record of a fierce inner struggle following what he called "an interrupted friendship," a friendship that he had come to depend on, only to find himself seemingly abandoned and rejected. He left his community, went into counseling therapy, and during this period, after each counseling session wrote a "spiritual imperative" - "a command to myself that had emerged from our sessions. These imperatives were directed to my own heart. They were not meant for anyone but myself." Which is precisely what makes them so powerful. [summary from the Henri Nouwen Literary Centre site nouwen.net

Richard O'Connor, PhD. Undoing Depression: What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give You
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. etc - from Amazon.com review by reader Donald W. Mitchell

Marie Osmond. Behind the Smile : My Journey Out of Postpartum Depression

Barry Panter, MD, PhD, et al. Creativity and Madness: Psychological Studies of Art and Artists
"Eighteen Mental Health Professionals explore the psychological and emotional issues behind the creativity of 16 famous artists, writers, and composers. Discover how depression, drug and alcohol abuse, sexuality, aggression, and other components of the human condition led to great works of art by Van Gogh, Rossini, Michelangelo, Kahlo, Virginia Woolf, Wagner, Plath, Picasso, Magritte, and others." [publisher summary]

Sylvia Plath The Bell Jar
"Plath was an excellent poet but is known to many for this largely autobiographical novel. The Bell Jar tells the story of a gifted young woman's mental breakdown beginning during a summer internship as a junior editor at a magazine in New York City in the early 1950s. The real Plath committed suicide in 1963 and left behind this scathingly sad, honest and perfectly-written book, which remains one of the best-told tales of a woman's descent into insanity."

Jennifer Radden. The Nature of Melancholy : From Aristotle to Kristeva
"Spanning 24 centuries, this anthology collects over thirty selections of important Western writing about melancholy and its related conditions by philosophers, doctors, religious and literary figures, and modern psychologists. ... Editor Jennifer Radden provides an extensive, in-depth introduction that draws links and parallels between the selections, and reveals the ambiguous relationship between these historical accounts of melancholy and today's psychiatric views on depression. This important new collection is also beautifully illustrated with depictions of melancholy from Western fine art." [Amazon.com review]

Terrence Real. I Don't Want to Talk About It : Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression

Joel C. Robertson. Natural Prozac : Learning to Release Your Body's Own Anti-Depressants

"More than 21 million people worldwide use Prozac or other antidepressants. These medications alter levels of the brain chemicals that mediate mood. Brain chemistry can become imbalanced due to genetic causes, conditioned or learned patterns, or stressful or traumatic events. While medication often can change brain chemistry quickly and easily, up to two-thirds of depressed patients do not respond, experience harmful side effects, or need medication for only a short time. Perhaps more important, antidepressants do not affect the person's way of life, which often supports the imbalanced brain chemistry. [Booklist review by Penny Spokes]

Sherry A. Rogers. Depression: Cured at Last!
Dr. Rogers shares undercover causes that have enabled many to heal their depression. She spells out in detail how to diagnose and treat yourself, and even how to test your physician's knowledge when you do need his help.

Norman Rosenthal. Winter Blues : Seasonal Affective Disorder: What It Is and How to Overcome It

M. Sara Rosenthal, Debra Lander. Women & Depression : A Sane Approach to Mood Disorders
[Book News review:] A medical health journalist explains depression and how women experience it in practical feminist terms, defining medical terms, describing how to find a good therapist, and outlining a patient's rights. Includes a list of associations and services available, a glossary of terms, and other resources.

Zindel V. Segal et al.  Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression

Rebecca Shannonhouse. Out of Her Mind: Women Writing on Madness
Editor Rebecca Shannonhouse writes in her introduction: Like Zelda Fitzgerald, generations of other gifted, unconventional, and tormented women have seen their lives eclipsed by mental illness. They have suffered from depression, schizophrenia, manic depression and other disorders. Their life's ambitions have been derailed by illnesses that bring sadness, delusions, and fears...

Melvin Shaw.  Creativity and Affect

Edwin S. Shneidman, PhD. The Suicidal Mind
Three case studies from the files of a UCLA thanatologist demonstrate in chilling detail that killing oneself is no easy matter. Shneidman, who limits his comments to cultures with a Judeo- Christian tradition, proposes the not especially novel idea that psychological pain, or "psychache," is the primary cause of suicide. Using a form adapted from Henry A. Murray's Explorations in Personality to rate the psychological needs of individuals, he concludes that most suicides fall into five need clusters. ... Shneidman sums up with a list of ten psychological commonalities of suicide -- the common emotion is hopelessness/helplessness, the common action is escape, etc. -- and a list of 24 psychotherapeutic maneuvers that he deems appropriate in treating potential suicides. [Kirkus Reviews]

Julian L. Simon, et al.  Good Mood: The New Psychology of Overcoming Depression

Jeffery Smith  Where the Roots Reach for Water: A Personal and Natural History of Melancholia    "Depression affects 18 million Americans at any given time, one in five over a lifetime... In the 1990s while living in Missoula, Montana, and working as a case manager at a community mental health center, the author seeks treatment from a homeopathic physician, undergoes psychotherapy, and tries to understand this ancient illness. Smith discovers that what mystics called "the dark night of the soul" was.. a healing form of melancholia. Turning to the ministrations of the natural world, books, and music, the author reframes his depression and sees it as an agent of change.... its potential to become a spiritual teacher to those in its embrace." [review: Frederic Brussat, Values & Visions www.spiritualrx.com]

Andrew Solomon The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

William Styron. Darkness Visible : A Memoir of Madness -- "In 1985 William Styron fell victim to a crippling and almost suicidal depression, the same illness that took the lives of Randall Jarrell, Primo Levi and Virginia Woolf. That Styron survived his descent into madness is something of a miracle. That he manages to convey its tortuous progression and his eventual recovery with such candor and precision makes Darkness Visible a rare feat of literature.." [Amazon.com]

Michael E. Thase, MD, Susan S. Lang. Beating the Blues: New Approaches to Overcoming Dysthymia
and Chronic Mild Depression -- Thase and Lang show how chronic mild depression can be relieved by learning strategies that help us to recognize negative and distorted thinking patterns that lead to a downward spiral of pessimism. They reveal that a combination of medication and therapy has been shown to be the most effective treatment for mild depression, with an impressive 85% of patients experiencing full relief. They discuss when you should seek help from a therapist and what kinds of therapy seem the most effective (therapies that focus on the here and now seem to work best); outline the safer new antidepressants that are helpful for both mild and severe depressions, detailing each drug's strength and weakness; and examine alternative therapies, including stress management (meditation, relaxation, massage, biofeedback), physical exercise, acupuncture, supplements, and other mind/body therapies.

Lynn C. Tolson. Beyond the Tears: A True Survivor's Story
Reviewer: Sandra P. Riggin, MEd, LPC, CCM, CVE (Sautee, Ga United States) This book is a story that needs to be read by anyone who has ever thought about suicide, has experienced abuse or is running from the painful memories of their past. Lynn provides a powerful story as she takes you down the painful path of her last suicide attempt that almost killed her. ... Having been given a reprieve, Lynn finds a special therapist she can begin her journey of healing with.. that gives her the permission and freedom to talk about the sordid and painful memories of her past. She reveals her innermost secret about being sexually abused by her father and then her own brother. ... In the end, Lynn overcomes her past, confronts her perpetrators and stops just existing, but begins living. She then courageously writes her own story, offering hope to anyone who is a survivor of childhood abuse, neglect and/or trauma.

E. Fuller Torrey, Michael B. Knable. Surviving Manic Depression: A Manual on Bipolar Disorder for Patients, Families, and Providers -- A lucid, thorough guide to every aspect of living with bipolar disorder... covers symptoms, treatment and advocacy. E. Fuller Torrey (Surviving Schizophrenia), psychiatry professor and Treatment Advocacy Center president, and psychiatry instructor Michael B. Knable explain what mania and depression feel like from the inside, the causes and risk factors, the range of possible medications and treatments... [Publishers Weekly]

Tanya Tucker. 100 Ways to Beat the Blues : An Uplifting Book for Anyone Who's Down
from Chapter One: The Two-Hour Blues : Any entertainer will tell you that when you get on that tour bus, you sometimes feel you are leaving the problems of the real world behind. You're out there on the road where problems with the plumbing at your house, or the lawn that needs mowing, or the important call you haven't returned are miles away. They'll usually be waiting for you upon your return, but still, it's out of sight, out of mind. But the one thing you can't outrun on the road is the blues. The blues travel fast. They'll catch up.

Mitzi Waltz. Bipolar Disorders: A Guide to Helping Children & Adolescents -- [Book News review:] An excellent plain-language guide for parents of children and adolescents with bipolar disorders, explaining diagnosis and common misdiagnoses, medications and responses, therapeutic interventions, and alternative therapies. Gives advice on family life and support, and discusses insurance issues  and working within the educational system.  Material is detailed yet easy to understand. Includes an extensive list of resources such as groups and agencies, publications, web sites, mail order pharmacies, and alternative medicine resources. The author is a journalist and mother of a daughter with the disorder.

Peter C. Whybrow A Mood Apart : The Thinker's Guide to Emotion and Its Disorders -- [Kirkus Reviews:] "The most thorough and wide-ranging discussion for lay readers about the interplay of the physical and emotional elements of depression and manic-depression."

Lewis Wolpert Malignant Sadness : The Anatomy of Depressionen

Elizabeth Wurtzel Prozac Nation : Young and Depressed in America : A Memoir

Michael D. Yapko. Breaking the Patterns of Depression
Library Journal: The rate of depression has increased by nearly tenfold in those born in the years following World War II, making it the most common psychological problem in America. Depression expert Yapko presents a book that will help put depression in perspective and equip sufferers with the skills and knowledge to heal themselves of this modern plague. The first part of the book is devoted to discussing the clinical literature on psychotherapy and antidepressant medication. Here, the causes of depression, its diagnosis, and its treatment are explained in language easily understood by the lay reader. The second part is devoted to explaining the patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that signal depression. Yapko effectively uses case histories as well as more than 100 exercises to assist the reader in building the skills needed to manage depression.

Michael D. Yapko, Ph.D. Hand-Me-Down Blues : How to Stop Depression from Spreading in Families

Michael D. Yapko, Ph.D. Treating Depression With Hypnosis : Integrating Cognitive-Behavioral and Strategic Approaches

Michael D. Yapko, PhD. When Living Hurts: Directives For Treating Depression 

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