Customer Reviews

Understanding Depression: What We Know and What You Can Do About It

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This is not a bad book, all in all. It covers a lot of useful territory, and for someone recently diagnosed who doesn't know a lot about depression, it might be a decent place to start. But, for those of us who are not starting from scratch, this book doesn't add much, if anything, to better books already out, and it falls short of the mark in some important ways.

My gripes with this book fall into two main categories. First, the book lacks detail in critical areas. For example, in the section on medications, there is only a passing reference to the sexual side effects of the SSRIs, and there is no discussion of how patients can deal with that problem -- i.e. reduce dosage, switch to another medication, augment the SSRI with another drug, etc. The author should know that sexual side effects like anorgasmia and reduced libido affect a huge percentage of people who take SSRIs, and that these side effects diminish the quality of many patients' lives and create serious compliance problems. I'm shocked that this important subject is given such cursory treatment. The section on meds also lacks details concerning dosages, augmentation, and withdrawal, important topics all. So much for the book jacket promise of a "cutting edge" discussion of medications! At the same time, the book is fairly long, and probably not an easy read for someone truly suffering from depression. If a reader is expected to plow through this much text, he or she should at least be rewarded with more detail and "state of the art" information, as promised.

Second, there are some pretty egregious errors in the medication sections. The charts covering various meds are a great idea, and they could be very useful, but they are replete with mistakes. Drug names are misspelled ("maclobemide" instead of moclobemide, "tobomax" instead of Topomax, for example) and the generic and brand names are sometimes flip-flopped (see "tobomax" and Lamictal for example). There is just no excuse for the sloppy, inaccurate charts. Didn't SOMEBODY who knew SOMETHING about these meds PROOFREAD this section? I really couldn't recommend this book to someone suffering from depression knowing that there are significant, obvious errors like this. I'd lack confidence that the rest of the book was more carefully written and edited.

I should confess that I was induced to pick up this book because of the promise of "cutting edge" info on meds, so that's where I started reading. The other sections, which I skimmed, looked pretty run of the mill, although I might feel differently upon a closer reading -- which won't be happening due to the other flaws noted above.

There is some good information here and perhaps the book will appeal to some readers. But, in my view, the book has some significant flaws, and it really doesn't add anything to a field that's already fairly crowded with better books.

"Understanding Depression" is a clear and concise view of the illness through the eyes of "a psychiatrist who has seen in consultation, teaching, research, and treatment settings some 8,000 people with clinical depression and manic-depressive illness."

Dr. J. Raymond DePaulo Jr., M.D. is not only a psychiatrist, but also a psychiatry professor and the director of the Affective Mental Disorder Clinic at John Hopkins School of Medicine. Dr. DePaulo has written a cogent book at what it means to suffer from depression and its possible causes. The psychiatrist also covers various aspects of manic-depression, but the lion's share of the book covers the illness of depression. Despite numerous advances in medical science, we are still not clear on what causes depression. Dr. DePaulo states, "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."

Where the book becomes shortsighted is within the sections dealing with the treatment of depression. The doctor advocates the use of traditional and cutting-edge medication as the cure for the vast majority of people throughout the book. It is not surprising that a psychiatrist does not go in depth concerning alternatives to drug therapies, but Dr. DePaulo covers only an astonishing 9 pages regarding alternative treatments such as exercise, nutrition, or talk therapy. In fact, large portions of the text read like a long pharmaceutical advertisement.

In the end, "Understanding Depression" is an invaluable guide to just that, understanding depression. However, the latter part of the subtitle, "What You Can Do About It," is a biased view of a psychiatrist whose only remedy are pills despite this "cure" entailing ineffectiveness and serious side-effects for a significant portion of the recipients.

Bohdan Kot

I have major depressive disorder. This book helped me understand the science of how the brain works with the various chemicals and drugs. As far as the experience or treatment, there wasn't much that I found personally relevant or didn't already know or that went into enough depth for me.

The book is a basic guide to understanding depression and does not offer any sort of cure or ideal treatment plan. That's not the point of it. The information is presented categorically and clearly with the resources cited, should you like to go further. The more common methods of treatment are presented with explanations of how they work and why.

However, this book was an excellent resource for the other people in my life who have been affected by my depression. They don't need or want to know all about the treatment options and experience in great depth. They do need to know some of the why's and how's and that it's not their fault. My parents found it to be quite helpful in understanding what was happening with me.

This is one of the most thorough books on depression that I've read. I don't agree with one of the other reviewers who stated that those who are very familiar with depression may not learn too much from this book- it covers so much territory that novices and experts alike will surely learn quite a bit. The quality of writing is quite high, though some sections could possibly have been shortened. The organization of the book is pretty straightforward and intuitive, and I found this to be a smooth and easy read. My biggest criticism is that I would have liked to see the author open up a little more with more insider tips and idiosyncratic findings, rather than tending a little more toward reserved generalities. Nonetheless, the book is still quite detailed and well worth reading if you're interested at all in the subject of depression. Avery Z. Conner, author of "Fevers of the Mind".

After I had seen a therapist and progressed through weeks of beneficial treatment, I set out on my own to search for more helpful information. I was going to buy this book in the bookstore; I had in hand, but declined to purchase it. After borrowing it from a library and giving it a closer look I am mighty glad that I didn't waste my money. Because this book basically offered me nothing I didn't already know or already understood about my depression experience. Nor did it present anything I was remotely interested in because its subject content is extremely broad, including all manifestations of severe depressive disorders, treatments and medical occupations mostly irrelevant to me. Needless to say, I ended up skimming chapters from start to finish.

This massing of material gives it a textbook feel. Made even more evident in how the author remains rather speculative or skeptical; basically sticking to proven facts, dwelling immensely on history, boring statistics and the biological science of depression to a point of near confusion. The author seems to play it safe and skirts the edge with no clear expression on any strongly opinionated side of issues like those concerning "alternative" treatments. Mainly remaining on neutral ground and bouncing back 'n forth. The author also goes the long, descriptive and complicated way about saying very little and is extremely repetitive. What surfaces continuously is how the author claims that what we know and understand about depression is actually very diminutive and not really clear. Though this is true and certainlly what we know now is a lot more than what we knew twenty years ago. But actually all of this got to be quite draining. Also not to mention how the book seems to present no real strong sense of what a common person afflicted with depression can do about it other than what they probably have conventionally done already.

The book is contradictive and inappropriately titled. To me it seems written more so for those studying in a professional, specialized and advanced field significant to technically improving depressive illnesses. Plus the author dwells quite a bit on his own method of practice. I was quite dissatisfied and unimpressed with this book and would not recommend it, especially not to someone currently struggling through a severe depression of any kind.

If you're looking to learn about depression, this is an EXCELLENT book to begin with. DePaulo does a great job of explaining what depression is (and isn't) and what we do and don't know about it.

He explores the causes of depression and he's not afraid to say when something isn't 100% certain. The truth is, they're still learning so much about the causes of depression that I'm very suspicious of anyone who claims to know exactly what causes it or how best to treat it.

Also, the book reads well.. his writing style is very conversational. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who is trying to understand what depression is and the options one has in dealing with it.

Excellent. This man is brilliant. After 12 years of depression he is the only doctor who correctly treated my daughter.

"Understanding Depression" is going to help so many people understand this awful disease. It's helped me learn about the different types of depression, the treatments available to help, and most importantly it has given me hope that despite the pain of this disease, many people can and have recovered from it.

This is an excellent book that I would highly recommend for anyone struggling with the depression. However, since publication of the marvelous book, the FDA has approved vagus nerve stimulation as a treatment for chronic depression. Vagus nerve stimulation is NOW the mainstream treatment for chronic or recurrent depression. Patients and their families should educate themselves about this remarkable treatment-it could change their life. I would recommend the book-"Out of the Black Hole: The Patient's Guide to Vagus Nerve Stimulation and Depression". It's a must read for anyone struggling with the grips of the terrible disease.

There is a pretty good overview of the popular treatments for depression. But nothing new here.For better help in getting out from under depression I recommend the book Depression is a Choice by A. B. Curtiss.