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- Herausgeber: Gill Books
- Kategorie: Ratgeber
- Sprache: Englisch
In Depression – The CommonSense Approach, clinical psychologist Dr Tony Bates approaches the whole area of depression with sympathy, understanding and knowledge. Depression is far more common than we want to believe. There are many forms of depression and varying degrees of severity, but all are serious and debilitating for sufferers and their families. Dr Bates explains depression, outlines the common and not so common signs, looks briefly at some of the theories that have been put forward to explain it, and provides those affected with the necessary tools to help deal with it. This is a practical and easily accessible book. The prescriptive chapters will provide sufferers with the help they need to deal with self-defeating behaviours and to change patterns of relating to others that keep them vulnerable to depression. The key message is that clear and compassionate thinking helps build self-esteem and gives us back a trust in ourselves that gets lost when we become depressed. Dr Bates also address important issues that are frequently overlooked for partners and families who live with a depressed person. The CommonSense Approach series is a series of self-help guides that provide practical and sound ways to deal with many of life's common complaints. Each book in the series is written for the layperson, and adopts a commonsense approach to the many questions surrounding a particular topic. It explains what the complaint is, how and why it occurs, and what can be done about it. It includes advice on helping ourselves, and information on where to go for further help. It encourages us to take responsibility for our own health, to be sensible and not always to rely on medical intervention for every ill. Other titles in the series include Depression – The CommonSense Approach, Menopause – The CommonSense Approach and Sleep – The CommonSense Approach. Depression – The CommonSense Approach: Table of Contents Foreword by Professor Paul Gilbert Introduction - Recognising Depresson - What Causes Depression? - A Major Obstacle to Recovery: Hopelessness - Overcoming Depression: A Recovery Plan - Getting Started - It's the Thought that Counts - Changing your Self-image - Putting it All Together: Tom's Story - Living with a Depressed Person - Beyond Depression: Staying Well and Dealing with SetbacksSelf-help Books: A Guided Review Useful Addresses
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 1999
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Depression
Tony Bates
Newleaf
Contents
Cover
Title page
The CommonSense Approach Series
Please note
Foreword by Professor Paul Gilbert
Introduction
Sarah’s recovery journal excerpt 1
Chapter 1: Recognising depression
Sarah’s recovery journal excerpt 2
Symptoms of depression
Thinking characteristic of depression
Feelings characteristic of depression
Physical symptoms characteristic of depression
Behaviour characteristic of depression
Different types of depression
Recognising depression in children and adolescents
Port-partum depression
Who gets depressed?
Measuring your own mood
Depression checklist
Summary
Chapter 2: What causes depression?
Early childhood experiences that leave us prone to depression
Rigid rules of living
Social circumstances
Biological factors
Genetic theory of depression
Evolutionary theory and the ‘depressed brain’
Summary
Self-help exercise
Message in a bottle
Chapter 3: A major obstacle to recovery: hopelessness
Sarah’s recovery journal excerpt 3
The vicious cycle of hopelessness
Think in terms of ‘possibilities’
Approach old problems in new ways
Focus on positive past memories and specific future events you can look forward to
Refuse to accept that you somehow deserve to feel depressed
Be open to being surprised
Summary
Message in a bottle
Chapter 4: Overcoming depression: a recovery plan
Physical treatments for depression
Seeking help from a therapist
Strategies for overcoming depression
Reduce stress
Challenge your negative thinking
Know where your vulnerabilities lie
Try new ways of relating to others
The pattern of recovery from depression
Keeping a recovery journal
Sarah’s recovery journal excerpt 4
Message in a bottle
Chapter 5: Getting started
Step one: Putting some structure on your day
Daily activity schedule
What you may learn from activity scheduling
What can I do when I feel really down?
Step two: Include some human nurturing in your daily plan
Step three: Building in some time for personal reflection
Sarah’s recovery journal excerpt 5
Self-help suggestions
Message in a bottle
Activity diary
Chapter 6: It’s the thought that counts
The link between thoughts and moods
Daily mood log version 1
Step one: Describe the situation where you noticed yourself feeling depressed
Step two: Identify the different feelings that form part of your mood
List of common negative feelings
Step three: Identify your negative automatic thoughts
Sarah’s recovery journal excerpt 6
Talking back to your negative thoughts
Talking back to negative thoughts: Dealing with exam stress
Summary
Self-help exercise
Message in a bottle
Daily mood log version 2
Chapter 7: Changing your self-image
I am a rock
What can we learn from Richard’s story?
My needs don’t matter, other people are more important than me
Sarah’s recovery journal excerpt 7
Sarah’s recovery journal excerpt 8
Sarah’s recovery journal excerpt 9
What can we learn from Sarah’s story?
I’m not good enough
What can we learn from David’s story?
Learning to care for what is most vulnerable in you
Summary
Self-help exercise
Message in a bottle
Chapter 8: Putting it all together: Tom’s story
What triggered Tom’s depression
Chapter 9: Living with a depressed person
(1) Living with someone who has not yet accepted they have a problem
(2) Living with someone who accepts they are depressed
(a) Don’t be provoked by negative behaviours
(b) Respect, even when you can’t understand
(c) Give space but don’t isolate
(d) Don’t wear a worried look around the sufferer all the time
(e) Keep your own family and social life going
(f) Don’t underestimate children who may be involved
Summary
Chapter 10: Beyond depression: Staying well and dealing with setbacks
The AAA relapse prevention plan
Key points to help you in your recovery
Having something to hold on to in a crisis
Summary
Sarah’s recovery journal excerpt 10
Self-help books: A guided review
Acknowledgments
Copyright
About the Author
About Gill & Macmillan
The CommonSense Approach Series
This series of self-help guides from Newleaf provides practical and sound ways to deal with many of life’s common complaints.
Each book in the series is written for the layperson, and adopts a commonsense approach to the many questions surrounding a particular topic. It explains what the complaint is, how and why it occurs, and what can be done about it. It includes advice on helping ourselves, and information on where to go for further help. It encourages us to take responsibility for our own health, to be sensible and not always to rely on medical intervention for every ill.
While the author has made every effort to ensure that the information contained in this book is accurate, it should not be regarded as an alternative to professional medical advice. Readers should consult their general practitioners or physicians if they are concerned about aspects of their own health, and before embarking on any course of treatment. Neither the author nor the publishers can accept responsibility for any health problem resulting from using, or discontinuing, any of the drugs described here, or the self-help methods described.
Foreword
Depression haunts the lives of many and is more and more common in the Western world. This is particularly so for women. There are many explanations for why this might be, including increasing role strain for women, fragmentation of communities, changing expectations, and feelings of needing to compete with others to prove oneself worthy, competent and able. Whatever the sources, Dr Bates has written a useful book which helps potential sufferers understand the nature of depression, what it feels like to be depressed and more importantly that depression is an eminently treatable condition. Once one is able to recognise and be honest with oneself about the nature of depression then there are various things that can be done.
Different people with different types of depression benefit from different types of treatment. Some people gain enormous benefit from medication which returns their sleep to reasonable levels, reduces anxiety to within tolerable limits and helps them dwell less on the negatives in their lives. Depression can be a state of exhaustion when people become physically and psychologically exhausted and those around them can feel the same. Medication can help energy levels return. However, many people want to go beyond this and to try to understand how they became depressed and more importantly what they can do to help themselves. Dr Bates has written clearly on this subject. He describes how people’s depressions are often (but by no means always) rooted in deep fears and concerns about the adequacy or inadequacy of oneself. Underlying feelings of worthlessness, inferiority and failure which may have been gained in childhood can resurface again and again in times of life crisis. This makes the crisis and the stress in our lives more difficult to cope with than need be because we continually see it through the lens of it indicating our own personal failures once again. This book outlines how commonly this occurs for people who suffer depression, and discusses what one can do to identify those typical depression thoughts and how one can begin to challenge them.
Dr Bates shares with us a number of his own experiences in treating depressed patients and highlights some of the key things that have helped those people. From these kinds of self-help books one hopes for two things. Firstly, that depression can be seen as a sadness, sometimes a tragedy but never a shame. With over one hundred million depressed people in the world today we have to see depression as a disorder which has an origin, a course and a treatment. Depression is no respecter of status, intelligence, class or race. It can strike anyone at any time. It is related to various interacting forces in our current lives, in our past lives and in our bodies. The more we are able to confront depression honestly and without shame, the better position we will be in to help ourselves recover. Dr Bates has outlined a programme which not only helps to de-shame the experiences of depression but points to some key processes that can aid recovery.
Professor Paul Gilbert F.B.Ps.S. Mental Health Research Unit, Derby
Introduction
Depression is a thief that steals from people; it robs them of energy, vitality, self-esteem, and any pleasure that they might previously have enjoyed. For some the physical intensity of their pain and despair makes suicide appear the only possible solution. Depression makes one self-centred but not selfish. As with a throbbing toothache, it’s hard to think about anything except your own personal hell when you are depressed.
Depression can have a very destructive impact on families and loved ones. Children cannot but sense and feel troubled by a parent’s dark moods, partners even more so. The effort to alleviate the pain of depression in a loved one inevitably fails and even the most well-intended interventions of friends and spouses can leave all concerned feeling helpless and alienated. Depression can create havoc in the lives of all it touches and sow seeds of misunderstanding and anger that persist long after the gloom has lifted. While this book is primarily intended as a guide to recovery for the sufferer, it is also written with relatives and friends of the sufferer in mind, in the hope that it may make sense of what can be a difficult problem to grasp from the ‘outside’. Understanding of the problem by all who are affected can act as a bridge between those who feel isolated and those who feel alienated by depression.
Susan was tall, blonde and in her late twenties. Her outward appearance suggested a self-contained, confident woman, but her eyes told a different story. She looked as if she’d rather have been anywhere but my office the day she first arrived. Her movements were awkward and stiff. Eye contact was avoided and I hesitated to ask her why she’d come, sensing it might be an invasion of a privacy which was being anxiously guarded. We danced around the central issue for a while as I pieced together a profile of her family background, her schooling and occupation, and her current circumstances. She relaxed a little but when I asked what had brought her to see me, her fragile holding together gave way to a flood of tears.
Words failed Susan as she tried vainly to account for her terrible sadness. She felt she had no right to complain but she described how in recent weeks she had found herself collapsing into tears for no apparent reason, overcome by the feeling that she was stupid, worthless and completely out of control. She apologised repeatedly for her demeanour. She struck me as someone who didn’t normally, if ever, let down her guard about her inner struggles. But on this occasion the intensity of her inner pain refused to be silenced and she had sought counselling to help her make some sense of it all.
In writing this book, I think about Susan on that first visit, and many others who have come and confronted the intense inner pain that is depression. All have been confused and frightened by what was happening to them. Their own desperation, the experience of ‘losing a grip’ on work and life, or the helpless exasperation of close loved ones, prompted them to reach out and look for help. I imagine you are reading this book having struggled also with depression, perhaps directly, or indirectly through living with someone who is visited and revisited by this problem. My hope is that you will find in Susan’s story, and in the account of others’ struggles with depression, some echo of your own experience. Also that you will discover that you are not ‘mad’ or ‘stupid’ or ‘horribly selfish’. There are reasons why someone becomes depressed; being able to understand and make sense of the experience restores morale.
In this book we will consider some strategies for moving out of depression and these will be mostly straightforward and practical. However, there is another theme that will run through these pages and hopefully make sense to you: if depression distorts my sense of who I am, how do I recover a sense of my true self? Maybe you’ve never been very clear about who you are. One of the advantages of struggling with depression is that you take up a quest to get to know and express your true self.
As we travel together through these pages, you may want to consider that you are not what your present negative mood says you are: you are not the ‘stupid’, ‘inadequate’, ‘hopeless’ or ‘unlovable’ person that you believe you are right now. You’re a human being, no better or no worse than others whom you admire. You’re as unique and as interesting as they are and equally deserving of respect and encouragement. Don’t expect to feel convinced of this at the moment, but even your choosing to read this book suggests that somewhere inside, you believe that you deserve more. This book will speak to that part of you that wants more out of life, that inner voice that refuses to give in to depression. It may only be a tiny voice at the moment, but my aim in these pages is to strengthen that voice and help you discover a truer, healthier sense of who you really are. Someone who includes and makes room for personal vulnerability, but who never loses sight of their capacity for joy. Someone you’d be glad to wake up to each morning.
