This book is offered as a lifeline to people at the bottom of the bottomless pit of depression. It will explain the research and the thinking behind the tough love approach, much of which may be new to you because it flies in the face of current trends. With positive, common sense strategies, this book enables you to regain emotional control, showing that it is possible to combat depression without resorting to drugs or costly and often ineffective therapy. The first part of the book offers fresh insights into depression and into how it can be overcome. The second offers practical advice, culminating in a series of challenges that will enable you to change your entire attitude to emotional health and achieve a more positive and hopeful outlook on life. To be of any real use to someone in despair, a self-help programme must provide, step by step, a practical stairway out of hell. This is that stairway.

Lasting happiness comes not from chasing the American dream but from living an authentic life—which includes despair. In a culture obsessed with youth, financial success, and achieving happiness, is it possible to live an authentic, meaningful life? Nassir Ghaemi, director of the Mood Disorder Program at Tufts Medical Center, reflects on our society's current quest for happiness and rejection of any emotion resembling sadness. On Depression asks readers to consider the benefits of despair and the foibles of an unexamined life. Too often depression as disease is mistreated or not treated at all. Ghaemi warns against the "pretenders" who confuse our understanding of depression—both those who deny disease and those who use psychiatric diagnosis "pragmatically" or unscientifically. But experiencing sadness, even depression, can also have benefits. Ghaemi asserts that we can create a "narrative of ourselves such that we know and accept who we are," leading to a deeper, lasting level of contentment and a more satisfying personal and public life. Depression is complex, and we need guides to help us understand it, guides who comprehend it existentially as part of normal human experience and clinically as sometimes needing the right kind of treatment, including medications. Ghaemi discusses these guides in detail, thinkers like Viktor Frankl, Rollo May, Karl Jaspers, and Leston Havens, among others. On Depression combines examples from philosophy and the history of medicine with psychiatric principles informed by the author's clinical experience with people who struggle with mental illness. He has seen great achievements arise from great suffering and feels that understanding depression can provide important insights into happiness.

Many of you who appear to have life under control are simply great actors. Underneath you live with inner tensions, anxiety or panic states, feelings of hopelessness or paranoia, racing thoughts, ongoing anger, bone-weary fatigue. . . . The good news is that all this is fixable. What is the best treatment for ongoing depression, mood swings, exhaustion, and anxiety? Psychotherapy? Prescription drugs? Or is there a natural way that works better and is safer, faster, and cheaper? There is, and now Joan Mathews Larson, Ph.D., the brilliant nutritionist who founded Minnesota's esteemed Health Recovery Center, offers her revolutionary formulas for healing your emotions--biochemically. Twenty years of working with both addicted and nonaddicted patients has shown Larson that unhealthy and unstable moods are the result of the chemistry of our physical brains and are not psychological in origin. When you feed your imbalanced brain what it craves--the key essential fatty acids (EFAs), natural mind-body hormones, and the right amino acids--most mood swings, depressions, anxiety, and other upsets will disappear, even if they have a genetic basis. Through proven all-natural formulas, Seven Weeks to Emotional Healing will help you find the emotional stability and well-being you've been missing your entire life. Inside you'll discover how to - Screen yourself for emotional and behavioral symptoms - Recognize the mental and physical clues that indicate biochemical imbalances - Find an open-minded health practitioner - Eat the right foods for optimal mental fitness Dr. Larson also provides her unique anti-aging formula that restores sexual function, rejuvenates the immune system, elevates mood and energy levels, reduces stress, and expands your life span! Seven Weeks to Emotional Healing is both responsible and effective--and gives you the tools you need to find lasting emotional health and contentment for the first time in your life.

Depression is a rumor, until it is reality, and then it's as if nothing else was ever real. Still, no one will believe you. I find it hard to believe it myself. This book is for those who believe, and for those who want to. Depression is encased in misconceptions. The pain of going through a mental illness is already hard enough; to add myths only makes it that much more unbearable. By investigating the mystery of depression, it's possible to remove some of the fog around the fog. It's in sharing what we go through that we are empowered to make it through together. This book is a conversation so we can talk differently about depression, with the thoughtfulness it deserves. It's for both the person wrestling with depression and for those who want to help. How Hard It Really Is covers: - The science behind depression - The helpful (and unhelpful) dialogue around mental illness - The debate between seeing it as a choice and disease - Stories of survivors - A secret culture of suicide worship - An interview with a depressed doctor - The problem with finding a "cure" - A myriad of voices from nearly two-hundred surveys conducted over a year

'Simple, lucid advice' Matt Haig, Sunday Times bestselling author of Reasons to be Alive, on Making Friends with Anxiety If you're suffering from depression or very low mood, you can end up feeling alone, desperately struggling to find a way through - but recovery is possible and, in Making Friends with Depression, bestselling authors Sarah Rayner and Kate Harrison, together with GP Dr Patrick Fitzgerald show you how. They explain that hating or fighting depression can actually prolong your suffering, whereas 'making friends' with difficult emotions by compassionately accepting these feelings can restore health and happiness. Sarah (Making Friends with Anxiety) and Kate (The 5:2 Diet Book) write with candour, compassion and humour about lifting low mood and easing symptoms because they've both experienced - and recovered from - depression themselves, while GP Dr Patrick Fitzgerald draws on his clinical understanding to offer practical advice on treatment options and finding support. The book explores: * The different types of depressive illness * Where to seek help and how to get a diagnosis * The pros and cons of the most commonly-prescribed medications * The different kinds of therapy available * Why depression can cause so many physical symptoms * What to do if you suffer suicidal thoughts * How to stop the spiral of negative thinking and boost self-esteem * Evidence-based steps to improve mental health and avoid relapse Fully illustrated and reflecting the latest National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines, Making Friends with Depression is succinct and surprisingly uplifting.The result is book that doesn't shy away from the distress that depression can cause, but is packed with simple tips that are easy to implement thereby offering hope and guidance through the darkest of times. PRAISE FOR MAKING FRIENDS WITH ANXIETY 'Reads like chatting with an old friend; one with wit, wisdom and experience' Brighton and Hove Independent PRAISE FORTHE 5:2 DIET BOOK 'The go-to 5:2 bible... Inspiring, motivational, simple' Women's Fitness PRAISE FOR SARAH RAYNER: 'Explores an emotive subject with great sensitivity' Sunday Express 'Brilliant... Warm and approachable' Essentials 'Carefully crafted and empathetic' The Sunday Times 'A sympathetic insight into the causes and effects of mental ill-health as it affects ordinary people. Powerful' My Weekly PRAISE FOR KATE HARRISON: 'Warm and witty' The Evening Telegraph 'Poignant and funny' She 'A very readable page-turner ... interesting and thought-provoking Book Trust

Countless Christians — including scores of saints — have suffered profound, pervasive sorrow that modern psychiatrists call “depression.” Then, as now, great faith and even fervent spiritual practices have generally failed to ease this wearying desolation of soul. In these pages, Catholic psychiatrist Aaron Kheriaty reviews the effective ways that have recently been devised to deal with this grave and sometimes deadly affliction — ways that are not only consistent with the teachings of the Church, but even rooted in many of those teachings. Extensive clinical experience treating patients with depression has shown Dr. Kheriaty that the confessional can't cure neuroses, nor can the couch forgive sin. Healing comes only when we integrate the legitimate discoveries of modern psychology and pharmacology with spiritual direction and the Sacraments, giving particular attention to the wisdom of the Church Fathers and the saints. Here, with the expert help of Dr. Kheriaty, you'll learn how to distinguish depression from similarlooking but fundamentally different mental states such as guilt, sloth, the darkness of sin, and the sublime desolation called “dark night of the soul” that is, in fact, a privileged spiritual trial sent to good souls as a special gift from God. You'll come to know how to identify the various types of depression and come to understand the interplay of their often manifold causes, biological, psychological, behavioral, cultural, and, yes, moral. Then you'll learn about exciting breakthroughs in pharmacological and other medical treatments, the benefits and limitations of psychotherapy, the critical place that spiritual direction must have in your healing, and the vital role that hope — Christian hope — can play in driving out depression.

A New York Times Book Review Favorite Read of 2016 “Despair is always described as dull,” writes Daphne Merkin, “when the truth is that despair has a light all its own, a lunar glow, the color of mottled silver.” This Close to Happy—Merkin’s rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression—captures this strange light. Daphne Merkin has been hospitalized three times: first, in grade school, for childhood depression; years later, after her daughter was born, for severe postpartum depression; and later still, after her mother died, for obsessive suicidal thinking. Recounting this series of hospitalizations, as well as her visits to myriad therapists and psychopharmacologists, Merkin fearlessly offers what the child psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz calls “the inside view of navigating a chronic psychiatric illness to a realistic outcome.” The arc of Merkin’s affliction is lifelong, beginning in a childhood largely bereft of love and stretching into the present, where Merkin lives a high-functioning life and her depression is manageable, if not “cured.” “The opposite of depression,” she writes with characteristic insight, “is not a state of unimaginable happiness . . . but a state of relative all-right-ness.” In this dark yet vital memoir, Merkin describes not only the harrowing sorrow that she has known all her life, but also her early, redemptive love of reading and gradual emergence as a writer. Written with an acute understanding of the ways in which her condition has evolved as well as affected those around her, This Close to Happy is an utterly candid coming-to-terms with an illness that many share but few talk about, one that remains shrouded in stigma. In the words of the distinguished psychologist Carol Gilligan, “It brings a stunningly perceptive voice into the forefront of the conversation about depression, one that is both reassuring and revelatory.”

Drawing on the whole-person approach, Dr. Jantz reveals the treatments, practices, and lifestyle changes that can provide lasting relief from depression--by addressing its chemical, emotional, physical, intellectual, relational, and spiritual causes. --

Not everything is what it seems. In a desperate bid to free her twin sister from an evil caster, Kellen flees her sheltered life under the cover of darkness. Lost and on the run from the cursed beasts lurking in the Dark Forest, she stumbles upon a clearing where seven handsome men reside. Despite their wariness towards her, Kellen finds herself drawn to them. Their laughter, camaraderie, and the way they gaze at her awaken a longing she’s never known. Her intuition whispers that she must stay, yet her loyalty to her sister compels her to find a way to leave. To plot her escape and save her sister, Kellen will need to navigate the seductive charm of the seven men and her yearning for acceptance in this darker version of Snow White that’s as spell-binding as the seven hot and endearing men who hold her captive.

Nautilus Book Award Gold Winner A psychotherapist offers “crucial” guidance on how to “alter fundamentally our fearful relationship to deep feelings,” from depression and anxiety to grief and fear (Los Angeles Times) We are all touched at some point by the dark emotions of grief, fear, or despair. In an age of global threat, these emotions have become widespread and overwhelming. While conventional wisdom warns us of the harmful effects of “negative” emotions, this revolutionary book offers a more hopeful view: there is a redemptive power in our worst feelings. Seasoned psychotherapist Miriam Greenspan argues that it’s the avoidance and denial of the dark emotions that results in the escalating psychological disorders of our time: depression, anxiety, addiction, psychic numbing, and irrational violence. And she shows us how to trust the wisdom of the dark emotions to guide, heal, and transform our lives and our world. Drawing on inspiring stories from her psychotherapy practice and personal life, and including a complete set of emotional exercises, Greenspan teaches the art of emotional alchemy by which grief turns to gratitude, fear opens the door to joy, and despair becomes the ground of a more resilient faith in life. “This remarkable book has taught me a whole new way of thinking.” —Harold Kushner, author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People “A beautiful piece of work destined to become a perennial classic.” —Martha Beck, author of The Joy Diet