You Mean I Don't Have to Feel This Way?: New Help for Depression, Anxiety, and Addiction

by Colette Dowling

"A down-to-earth, hopeful, useful--and, from  the point of view of this 'recovered'  depressive--accurate account of how to treat  depression."--Mike Wallace, 60  Minutes .



Colette Dowling watched depression  destroy her husband's life and leap to the next  generation to nearly destroy her daughter's--until  dramatic help was found. Now her ground-breaking book  offer the same lifesaving help to the millions who  still suffer depression and related  disorders--which include panic, anxiety, phobias, PMS, alcohol  and drug abuse, bulimia, migraine, and obesity.   You Mean I Don't Have To Feel This Way?   documents the latest research that links  depression and related disorders to a physical cause and  shows why willpower, understanding, and  psychotherapy so often fail to work. It explains the  state-of-the-art medical treatments that can bring about  dramatic improvement--and often full recovery--within  weeks. This important book includes: startling new  links between eating disorders, addiction, and  depression. How to recognize the symptoms of  depression and anxiety disorders. Vital information about  new treatments for depressed children and  adolescents. A guide to breakthrough drugs for treating  mood, anxiety, and eating disorders. The newest  research on the use of antidepressants to prevent  substance-abuse relapse. How to find expert help and  evaluate the treatment you are given. Upbeat,  filled with hope and warmth, Colette Dowling's book  will change minds and save lives.

Genres: Nonfiction, Mental Health, Self Help

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

An American psychotherapist and writer best known for her 1981 book The Cinderella Complex: Women's Hidden Fear of Independence, which was a New York Times best-seller.

Reviews

[Cindy Jackson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first book I read after I was diagnosed with Clinical Depression. It really helped me to better understand what was going on and to know that I was not alone in what I was experiencing.

[Christine Fay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, published in 1991, is a bit dated by today’s standards in 2016, but it was amazing how little was known about psychiatric illnesses in the recent past. Ms. Dowling was on the forefront of the core causes of mental disorders and did well to bring this to the forefront of society. For me, the most valuable information I gleaned from it was that most teens who pick up a substance do so because they are self-medicating a mood disorder. This then leads to addiction, which is then treated in rehab, which unfortunately does not treat the root cause of the addiction, which was the previously undiagnosed mood disorder. Thus begins the vicious cycle of a lifelong addict with no ability to get off the wrong track of a misdiagnosis, or in most cases, a missed diagnosis. Teachers are on the front lines when it comes to dealing with students with undiagnosed mood disorders, and educating oneself about them is always a good thing. Too many people are quick to judge someone as being inferior because they suffer from anxiety. The fact is that people cannot control how their brain develops and which neurotransmitters are in working order, now can they?