Customer Reviews

What to Do When You're Sad & Lonely: A Guide for Kids

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Dr. Crist understands how children think and excels at talking with them about their emotional lives. Although our society has become more open about mental health issues in the past few decades, talking with children directly about depression and suicide is difficult for many adults. In "What to Do When You're Sad and Lonely," Dr. Crist leads by example. Using plain language, he addresses topics that are of great importance to children. He takes the mystery and stigma out of depression, grief and bi-polar disorder. He also provides a great service to children and their parents by providing a down-to-earth explanation of how therapy works and how it can help both children and adults.

By normalizing the experience of feeling sad and lonely, I think this book can help children to feel less alone. By offering practical suggestions without minimizing the real pain that can accompany depression, Dr. Crist offers hope and understanding. He is also careful to differentiate between the "blues" and clinical depression and emphasizes the importance of getting professional help with the latter.

The lay-out of the book is clear and easy to follow. The reader can either choose chapters that catch his/her interest or read the book from cover to cover. The purple illustrations are eye-catching and add visual interest, as do the comments in purple ink in the margins of some pages. Children from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds will see themselves reflected in the book's illustrations.

I liked that the book is simple and to the point but I wouldn't recommended it for young children (12 and under). The language tends to be more complex for the young one but pre-teens can make use of the book and its format. For older children/adolescents it may be too simplistic and not that useful. I was disappointed that there weren't any activities to do with a child. I was hoping to use them as interventions but most clients don't want to read the book in session. They need a practical "fun" intervention even though the topic may be difficult to address. Children are very resilient and having an activity to encourage the expression of thoughts and feelings is more useful than reading about it.

Very strongly recommended reading for children who must deal with depression, What To Do When You're Sad And Lonely: A Guide For Kids by James J. Crist (Clinical Director and Staff Psychologist at the Child and Family Center in Woodbridge, Virginia) is an outstanding reference specifically designed and written for children struggling with sorrow and other emotional disputes or confusions in their young lives. Informatively introducing grade school age children to an understanding of the signs of being sad, "blues busters" as coping skills for handling sadness, as well as exercises and tactics to help manage loneliness, guidelines for assessing sad and lonely feelings that are too hard to handle alone, as well as resources for internet organizations to help children out, What To Do When You're Sad And Lonely offers an effective and "kid friendly" approach of dealing with sadness, sorrow, unhappiness, isolation, depression, and loneliness.