Rethinking Depression

Rethinking Depression Coming Soon!

Rethink­ing Depres­sion, my lat­est book with New World Library, will appear Feb­ru­ary, 2012. In it I ques­tion whether “the men­tal dis­or­der of depres­sion” exists or whether in con­tem­po­rary times human sad­ness has been mon­e­tized and lan­guaged into a “men­tal dis­or­der.” I fol­low that dis­cus­sion with a plan for min­i­miz­ing sad­ness and liv­ing life with pur­pose. Here are some early com­ments on Rethink­ing Depres­sion.

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Allan Hor­witz, author of Cre­at­ing Men­tal Ill­ness: “Eric Maisel’s Rethink­ing Depres­sion raises fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about the dif­fer­ences between depres­sive men­tal dis­or­der and nor­mal sad­ness. Any­one who is won­der­ing if they really have clin­i­cal depres­sion will find this book to be a valu­able resource.”

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Kirk Schnei­der, author of Existential-Humanistic Ther­apy: “In this riv­et­ing decon­struc­tion of the ‘men­tal health indus­try,’ Eric Maisel pro­vides essen­tial tools to address human despair.  Although it will pro­voke con­tro­versy, Rethink­ing Depres­sion is one of the most per­cep­tive and acces­si­ble guides to life ful­fill­ment that I have ever read.”

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Joanna Mon­crieff, author of The Myth of the Chem­i­cal Cure and A Straight Talk­ing Intro­duc­tion to Psy­chi­atric Drugs. Joanna Mon­crieff is Senior Lec­turer in Social and Com­mu­nity Psy­chi­a­try, Depart­ment of Men­tal Sci­ences, Uni­ver­sity Col­lege Lon­don: “Rethink­ing Depres­sion helps us to under­stand how and why sad­ness and suf­fer­ing have been trans­formed into a med­ical or psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­or­der called ‘depres­sion,’ and why that trans­for­ma­tion has left us all “sicker and weaker” than we might oth­er­wise be. The sug­gested rem­edy to our mod­ern alien­ation, the injunc­tion to aban­don the search for hap­pi­ness and to live accord­ing to our prin­ci­ples, stands as a chal­lenge and an inspi­ra­tion to us all. I would rec­om­mend this book to suf­fer­ers and pro­fes­sion­als and any­one who is inter­ested in a deeper under­stand­ing of men­tal health issues.”

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Emmy van Deurzen, author of Psy­chother­apy and the Quest for Hap­pi­ness: “Rethink­ing Depres­sion is an uplift­ing and prac­ti­cal guide to life and how to live it bet­ter.  Eric Maisel has made exis­ten­tial think­ing acces­si­ble to all those who want to live their lives in a more delib­er­ate and engaged fashion.”

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If you’d like to take part in spread­ing the word about Rethink­ing Depres­sion and the issues it raises, drop me a line at ericmaisel@hotmail.com and let’s chat!