Candid, compassionate, engaging, and wise advice on dealing with depression.
A guide offers strategies for coping with a depressed relative or friend.
For over 20 years, Notte, a blogger, has dealt with her own depression. Her previous book, The Monster Under the Bed (2020), addressed how depression affects relationships. Writing it led to this work, which expands the focus to include “everyone who cares about anyone with depression.” The author’s effort, both noble and necessary, is written from the perspective of a person who struggles with depression. Notte also conducted extensive research under the supervision of a psychotherapist, and she enhances the volume with excerpted quotes from participants who have depression. Nonscientific and consumer-friendly, the content provides real insights into life with depression, the behaviors associated with it, and how best to assist someone with the condition. She begins by exposing some of the myths about depression and mental illness in general, suggesting that individuals with an ailment may conceal it “out of fear” because of society’s preconceived notions. Particularly revealing are some of the obstacles that may impede delivering aid to a person who is depressed. Notte’s explanation of “why you don’t need to understand and how you can still effectively support someone” is especially insightful and helpful. Much of her advice is simple yet powerful; for example, “People who are struggling want to know that they aren’t alone”; “Remember they are not causing the situation—depression is”; and “Be OK with people being not OK.” The author does an admirable job of weaving in her own often gut-wrenching experiences with those of the individuals she interviewed. Offering the voices of people of different ages, genders, races, and backgrounds helps clarify the key point that depression is universal and can affect anyone. The book’s final chapter, “The Cheat Sheet,” is likely to be extremely valuable; here, Notte presents specific tips on “what not to say—and what to say instead,” “things not to do (and things to do instead),” “active ways to support someone with depression,” and “things to remember when you don’t understand.” This useful chapter even includes specific ideas for texts and voice messages to send to a depressed person.
Candid, compassionate, engaging, and wise advice on dealing with depression.Pub Date: March 3, 2023
ISBN: 9781990869082
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Thornapple Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...
Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.
The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.
Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
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