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Undoing Depression
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Undoing Depression

What Therapy Doesn't Teach You and Medication Can't Give

Richard O'Connor
Little, Brown Spark, 2021
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8

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Recommendation

Everyone can feel depressed. However, typically, that feeling passes and doesn’t interfere with daily functioning over an extended period. This is different for people with depression. In this new edition of his well-respected book on managing depression, psychotherapist Richard O’Connor offers updates and advice. He combines expertise and warmth as he presents a rundown of useful information on depression as a disease. He covers factors that can cause or soothe it, explaining that some habits that help you mask depression can also prolong it. While getAbstract never offers medical advice, O’Connor can help teach readers how to build habits that can allay depression.

Summary

Many people in the world suffer from the disease of depression.

Depression is a major health issue the public tends to ignore because it still carries a stigma. Medical and psychological personnel are diagnosing people as having depression at increasingly younger ages, and suicide rates are rising. People suffer depression for many reasons, including childhood or family issues, genetics, social awkwardness, stress, lack of support, low self-esteem and pessimism.

Many people affected don’t seek therapy or medication because they don’t believe their sadness or symptoms actually are depression. Reaching out is productive: Talk therapy and the appropriate pharmacological treatment can ease depression and lead to positive changes. When depression persists or recurs, experts advise seeking medical guidance, because it can affect physical health, emotions, thoughts and behavior. Depression is not an emotion – it is a lack of emotion, a “loss of feeling.”

Depression causes changes in behavior and the brain.

Depression affects the brain’s dopamine system which is essential to trigger pleasure...

About the Author

Psychotherapist Richard O’Connor, PhD, is also the author of Rewire: Change Your Brain to Break Bad Habits, Overcome Addictions, Conquer Self-Destructive Behavior; Happy at Last: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Finding Joy; Undoing Perpetual Stress: The Missing Connection Between Depression, Anxiety and 21st Century Illness among other books.  

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