Depression, a chronic, recurring illness, affects twenty percent of the population. O'Connor, a therapist who suffers from depression, shows that depressed people have trouble digging themselves out of one episode or warding off the next because they have become adept at the "skills of depression," such as denying, procrastinating, and intellectualizing. Actively playing mentor, coach, cheerleader, and nurturer, therapists can engage patients' emotions, mitigate the effects of shame, and help them see connections between what happens in their lives and how they feel inside.
Richard O'Connor, PhD, is the author of Undoing Depression, Undoing Perpetual Stress, and Happy at Last. For fourteen years he was executive director of the Northwest Center for Family Service and Mental Health, a nonprofit mental health clinic, where he oversaw the work of twenty mental health professionals in treating almost a thousand patients per year. He is a practicing psychotherapist with offices in Connecticut and New York, and lives in Lakeville, Connecticut.