Top 13 Books About Depression Updated 04 /2024

Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton and Ed Bullmore's fresh insights are welcome guides to one of the most alone situations.

I contemplated suicide in the fall of 2015 because I felt numb, useless, and depressed. I was 25 years old when I first became sick with depression, a condition that has returned on and off since then. First, I chose for cognitive behavioral therapy rather than taking medicine. I was afraid that the drug would diminish my perception of the environment and my capacity to articulate it. I thought it would slow my mind. It wasn't until much later that I realized how important the appropriate medication was to my professional success. I'm able to write when I'm calm. Depression makes it difficult for me to move or communicate.

 

Authors such as JK Rowling, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Samuel Johnson are just a few who have battled depression and gone on to have great careers. Mental illness and creative writing have become synonymous, but it's also possible that the writer's life itself is a breeding ground for depression, with its tendency to ruminate on the darker side of life and its associated pain and suffering. Is it any surprise that authors are especially prone to mental condition, what with their fluctuating income, social isolation, disrupted sleep, and frequent harsh judgment from readers and peers?

In my opinion, this overlooks the advantages of the employment. I discovered stability in purpose while writing A Cure for Darkness: The Story of Depression and How We Treat It. Aside from psychedelics and the history of ECT, I also traveled to Zimbabwe to meet grandmothers who are leading the way in mental health care reform in their country.

I'm not the first to discover that writing books may be a kind of therapy for those who are suffering. Robert Burton, a physician in the 17th century, conducted extensive study and penned The Anatomy of Melancholy to prevent his thoughts from wandering back to the subject at hand. His book is the first in my Top 10 for its scope and timelessness.. From this basis, I then walk through a wide range of voices and experiences, each of which represents a significant step forward in our understanding, treatment, and de-stigmatization of depression. The understanding gained in these books may provide a critical type of companionship for the solitary suffering, since one of the most lonesome human experiences is simultaneously one of the most prevalent.

The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton

Burton, a 17th-century Oxford scholar, spent the rest of his life working on and improving this book. Melancholy is defined as a mental condition that may range from mild depression to full-blown craziness, and this essay doesn't simply focus on depression and its treatment. In other words, the whole range of depression. In spite of the notions of black bile and spirit vapours, its counsel is startlingly modern: exercise more, use your intellect, reconnect with nature, and eat healthily.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

As soon as Perkins Gilman became a mother in 1885, she fell into a profound despair. She claimed in her book, "I would rather have had a kid every week than suffer as I did in my head." Weariness miles below zero. It's impossible. "It's a living hell." It was only after her death that this novella, which was inspired by her treatment and her fear that she was on the verge of becoming mad, became a classic. Postpartum psychosis and depression are vividly described, as is the lengthy history of mistreatment and neglect of women's mental health.

Darkness Visible by William Styron

This is by far the smallest book about depression I've ever read, clocking in at only 98 pages. Insight into the "normal" melancholy despair is given in this famous passage. In addition, it serves as a reminder that one may overcome a strong feeling of despair. Styron's life was spared by antidepressants. Despite this, he makes an important point about the limitations of memoirs when it comes to addressing depression: "Depression is simply too complicated in its source, symptoms and treatment for unequivocal conclusions to be taken from a single individual's experience," he says.

The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon

It's an encyclopedia of despair that's breathtaking in its depth and closeness. As a way to meet his own depressive expectations, Solomon decides to get HIV from an out-of-towner in order to end his miserable life.

Love at Goon Park by Deborah Blum

Harry Harlow's monkey-separation experiments are well-known in the scientific community. Symbols of scientific animal abuse include the mother monkey in a wire cage, the clown-like features, and the newborn monkey clinging to the inanimate chest. It is through Blum's portrayal of Harlow's life and career as a filmmaker that we learn about his own issues with depression and how his work has contributed to our understanding of the role of love and connection in mental health.

A First-Rate Madness by Nassir Ghaemi

This serves as a timely reminder of the positive social effects of mental illness. Empathy, bravery, and crisis leadership are all qualities that persons with a history of depression are more likely to possess than those who have never suffered from depression. That this book is only concerned with male leaders who suffer from mental illness is a disservice. No, Ghaemi couldn't have covered Jane Addams, a Nobel Prize-winning humanitarian who fought depression and was given the Nobel Peace Prize.

An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison

The author's battle to embrace medicine as the best choice for her own treatment of mental illness is chronicled in this memoir. Anxiety and manic depression are two distinct conditions, however despite their differences, the stigma, lifestyle choices, and treatment options for both conditions are extremely similar.

Thrive by Richard Layard and David M Clark

If you're seeking for an up-to-date description of how and when cognitive behavioral therapy works, and how long its benefits may stay, this is the book for you. CBT has the potential to reverse the depression cycle in the proper patient.

Shock by Kitty Dukakis and Larry Tye

ECT has long been associated with a stigmatized treatment for severe depression, but Tye presents a journalistic viewpoint on the scientific data that supports this treatment's efficacy. As a whole, they argue for its continuing usage, particularly in the case of severely depressed patients who do not respond to other therapies.

The Inflamed Mind by Ed Bullmore

Easy-to-understand information on psychoneuroimmunology (the study of inflammatory processes that affect both the brain and the mind). A Radical New Approach to Depression may indicate that this is a new area of research, yet it has been around for quite some time, as the author explains. Epidemiology, immunology and trials into anti-inflammatories are finding that a subset of depressions stem from low-grade chronic inflammation.

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