Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression (Hardcover)

~ James S. Gordon M.D. (Author) "If you asked to see me as a doctor, to become my patient, I'd talk to you on the phone first..." (more)
Key Phrases: inner guide, soft belly, dynamic meditation, Safe Place, Dark Nights, United States (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A world expert offers a practical proven guide to finding hope and happiness in the ashes of depression. Unstuck is superb."
-Mehmet Oz, MD, author of the YOU guides

"In this extraordinary book, Dr. James S. Gordon, a pioneer in integrative medicine, offers practical ways to climb out of the dark psychological dungeon of depression. Both therapist and patient will benefit hugely from reading this book."
-Deepak Chopra, author of Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore

“Unstuck is truly remarkable. Dr. James S. Gordon has taken forty years of experience in psychiatry and distilled it down into one brilliant book that can help people suffering from depression or ordinary unhappiness and confusion. In this warm, practical and user-friendly book, Dr. Gordon takes great care to remind us how much power we have to change our own lives.”
-Dean Ornish, MD, author of The Spectrum

“Using an integrative perspective and drawing on traditional wisdom, psychiatrist James Gordon guides you through a whole-person journey out of depression that addresses the physical, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of the problem, not just a possible chemical imbalance in the brain. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who feels stuck."
-Andrew Weil, MD, Author of Healthy Aging and 8 Weeks to Optimum Health

“Depression is not what we think it is. Ideas that can change a culture come only a few times in a generation. Unstuck is such an idea, the answer to the one of the major causes of disability that has, until now, had only poor solutions. Dr. James Gordon, a pioneering voice in medicine for 40 years, has provided a practical and transformative guide for the suffering millions with depression. If you want to find out the real causes of depression and how to cure them, read this book.”
-Mark Hyman, MD, New York Times best selling author of UltraMetabolism

"There is so much offered here to those fortunate enough to make this book's acquaintance. Jim Gordon is a skilled open-hearted writer and observer who brings his readers with him on a healing journey of human understanding. Unstuck is a revelatory, passionately humane and thoroughly knowing guide for those who are troubled."
-Robert Coles, MD, Professor of Psychiatry and Medical Humanities, Harvard Medical School, author of the Children of Crisis series

“Unstuck is the most exciting book on transforming depression I’ve ever read. Before you reach for a drug, read this book to feel better. This book is EXACTLY what this over-medicated country needs right now. Unstuck is fabulous. Thank you Jim Gordon for writing it.”
-Christiane Northrup, MD, author of Mother-Daughter Wisdom, The Wisdom of Menopause, and Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom

"Dr. Gordon offers a fresh, holistic approach for what he calls the journey out of depression. While he is educated in Western medicine and has worked all over the world with victims of trauma, Dr. Gordon is also savvy about Chinese medicine, Indian healing traditions and Buddhist meditation. His treatments involve work with the body, the mind, and the spirit. Unstuck is one of the books that will help us break free from our compartmentalized ideas about mental health and our American tendency to pathologize ordinary life experiences. I recommend this for anyone struggling with darkness."
-Dr. Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia and Letters to a Young Therapist

Product Description

A groundbreaking, inspiring, and practical guide to healing depression without the use of antidepressants, from world-renowned, Harvard trained psychiatrist Dr. James S. Gordon

Each year, as many as twenty million Americans are diagnosed with clinical depression. Tens of millions more have low energy or feel unhappy and dissatisfied with their lives. And each year, American doctors write 189 million prescriptions for antidepressant drugs for these people. Dr. James Gordon, a Harvard Medical School-educated psychiatrist who founded and directs The Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, D.C., has been helping his patients find their way out of the darkness of depression for the past forty years. He has worked with everyone from high-powered Washington politicians to Hurricane Katrina victims, from overstressed doctors, lawyers, and stay-at-home moms to orphans from war-ravaged Kosovo and Gaza. Each one of Dr. Gordon’s patients is unique, but all suffer from some level of depression, and none are getting relief from the antidepressant drugs their doctors keep prescribing or the psychotherapy they’ve been receiving.

One of our country’s most distinguished psychiatrists and a pioneer in integrative medicine, Dr. Gordon believes that depression is not an end point, a disease over which we have no control. It is a sign that our lives are out of balance, that we’re stuck. It’s a wake-up call and the start of a journey that can help us become whole and happy, one that can change and transform our lives. Unstuck is a practical, easy-to-use guide explaining the seven stages of Dr. Gordon’s approach and the steps we can take to exert control over our own lives and find hope and happiness. Unstuck is designed for anyone who is suffering from depression, from mild subclinical depression (“the blues”) to its severest forms.

Dr. Gordon shows us how doctors and patients alike have come to depend on antidepressants, and how these drugs have disappointed so many. He then carefully links each of his seven stages to helpful suggestions for relieving depression’s symptoms. Using dramatic and inspiring examples from the patients he has worked with over the years, he explains the useful, mood-healing benefits of: food and nutritional supplements; Chinese medicine; movement, exercise, and dance; psychotherapy, meditation and guided imagery; and spiritual practice and prayer. He concludes each chapter with a carefully designed Prescription for Self-Care, guidelines to help each person play an active, effective role in their own healing. The result is Unstuck, an incredibly thoughtful, practical, and meditative guide to the difficult but rewarding journey out of depression. James

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The (June 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594201668
• ISBN-13: 978-1594201660
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #43,012 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

129 of 134 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Modern Bible for Depression Recovery, June 18, 2008

By	O. Brown "Ms. O. Khannah-Brown" (Twopeas, WA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

*****
This book, written by a psychiatrist who himself has suffered from depression, will be controversial because it describes depression as "the beginning of an unfolding process of self-awareness, not the grim end of a disease process". The author challenges the prevailing model of depression as a medical illness, basing everything upon current brain research and current medical research dealing with depression. This is a very, very important book, one that every person who deals with depression should read.

If you are looking for a quick and dirty way of dealing with depression and want to take medication only, and from then on never think about depression or your life again beyond renewing your prescription, you would do better by NOT buying this book. Recovery from depression does take some work. On the other hand, if you want to know more about current research with SSRI's and view medication as only a part of your approach to dealing with depression, you should DEFINITELY buy this book. If you are like me and wish that you didn't have to take medication at all, and are willing to do some work to recover, you should absolutely buy it---you will love it and benefit greatly from it as I have.

If you want to know what research truly says about SSRI's it's here and more besides. Step-by-step techniques and tools. Examples that I could relate to. Integrating diet and exercise--what is shown to work and what doesn't. Supplementation. Support. Meditation. Movement. Awareness. Obstacles on your journey. Spirituality. There is a chapter on "the dark night of the soul", which includes dealing with suicidal thoughts. Alternative practitioners and alternative supplementation (including SamE, St. John's Wort, and rhodiola. There are huge appendices filled with resources to help you to find out more about every aspect of depression recovery. And of course, for clinicians and others, there are references to formal studies.

"Unstuck" is a resource manual---a bible, even---for depression recovery. It is important for those who have depression and for those who love them and for others who want to know what experts now know about all of the approaches to depression recovery.

Highly recommended.
*****

UPDATE 7-14-08: I just wanted to add that I in no way disparage people who need or want a "medication only" approach for depression. Apparently my review has given this impression to at least one person, and I regret this. Perhaps this will be clearer: if you are adamant that you want pharmaceuticals, and ONLY pharmaceuticals, and you don't care about any integrative adjuvant approaches, AND you don't care what any studies say about the medication you are taking, your money would be wasted by purchasing this book. If you are happy and cured of your depression, in your own estimation, then you are indeed fortunate and certainly would not want this book. You would not be or feel stuck, and thus would not want to be "unstuck".

86 of 91 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Video review by Alan Cheuse of NPR's All Things Considered, June 30, 2008

By	J. Knecht (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Length:: 2:16 Mins

91 of 98 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice treatise, but a couple of troubling things..., September 9, 2008

By	Fred Thompson (TN) - See all my reviews

I'm almost sorry that I read this book. On one hand, the author really put together a fairly comprehensive and well-thought out set of treatment recommendations. I have no doubt that there would be tremendous benefit to the wholistic approach of yoga, meditation, social interaction, improved diet, and exercise, etc. in overcoming many instances of depression - but not all. In the depths of gloom and doom, it can be difficult, if not impossible, just to do something as trivial as brush your teeth or clean yourself in the morning let alone find the strength to self-motivate and begin - as well as sustain - a progam similar to the approach described above.

The author further indicates that he typically obtains better results with a depressed patient after 10-12 weeks of therapy than he would have had the patient received anti-depressant treatment. I can't dispute his findings, but I do question them, particularly in acutely depressed patients. Of course, one of the main themes of the book is that anti-depressants are of little to no use, which is effectively throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's just too extreme a reaction, in my opinion.

While I agree that they are certainly wildly overprescribed, I just don't think anti-depressants are useless. Moreover, I do not share the author's view that most/all depression has no organic basis and therefore can be treated by wholistic methods alone. One treatment method in the book, for example, was some kind of cognitive therapy where the patient was taught to avoid 'self-defeating' thoughts. I call that the 'Cancel That Thought Therapy', or the 'Don't Think of an Elephant in the Room Therapy', and as far as I'm concerned, it's a pretty useless approach - at least that's been my experience.

In summary, I do think that this book provides a ton of very good things that would enrich anyone's life. But in the case of seriously depressed people, I believe that anti-depressants may provide at least some kind of short-term intervention that wholistic methods alone (or together!) may not be able to. On balance, despite it's usefullness, I find it difficult to recommend this book unequivocally based on these criteria.