What do you think?
Rate this book
Restoring Intimacy: The Patient's Guide to Maintaining Relationships During Depression
"Restoring Intimacy" was conceived as a comprehensive resource from experts on depression, both researchers and clinicians, as well as patients. The book answers questions submitted by people living with depression, as well as from their partners and family members. "Restoring Intimacy" addresses a variety of issues, including how to recognize depression in a loved one, how to cope with side effects of antidepressant medications that may affect sexual function, and how to talk with a doctor about depression-related intimacy problems. "Restoring Intimacy" also contains a resource and self-test section, guiding readers to additional information and support.
114 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1999
14 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 26, 2019
A quick read, but the title of this book is very misleading. The title lead me to believe that it would have functional advice, and actionable tools or exercises for people with depression who want to restore/maintain intimacy in their relationships. It did not.
The book is set in a Q & A format with each question having multiple answers being given by various professionals in the mental health field. The first half of this 100 page book was all about defining depression. The second half was not so much about restoring intimacy as it was about waiting until it comes back on its own. It was a frustrating practice in redundancy. Every question was basically a variation of "I (or my partner with depression) are having trouble with intimacy because of my depression (or as a side effect of my medication). Every answer was a variation on the same three pieces of advice: 1) Take/change your meds, 2) Go to psychotherapy/couple's therapy 3) Wait until things get better.
Literally no better advice than to just wait it out. I find that to be pretty useless and extremely offensive. Just because a person has depression doesn't mean they're completely incapable of doing anything, and can't take actionable steps to make themselves feel more proactive/better about preserving the intimacy in their relationship. Even if it's not something that can be done in the deepest darkest depths of depression, there are things that can be done when you feel yourself falling into and coming out of depression that can help, and this book offered NONE of that.
I was also pretty offended at how even though most of the questions were given in a very open and non-gender specific format, then answers would assume/attribute issues to a specific gender.
Don't waste your time on this one. There are many other resources out there that provide better information and offer actionable tools/exercises/steps on the topic of intimacy and depression.
The book is set in a Q & A format with each question having multiple answers being given by various professionals in the mental health field. The first half of this 100 page book was all about defining depression. The second half was not so much about restoring intimacy as it was about waiting until it comes back on its own. It was a frustrating practice in redundancy. Every question was basically a variation of "I (or my partner with depression) are having trouble with intimacy because of my depression (or as a side effect of my medication). Every answer was a variation on the same three pieces of advice: 1) Take/change your meds, 2) Go to psychotherapy/couple's therapy 3) Wait until things get better.
Literally no better advice than to just wait it out. I find that to be pretty useless and extremely offensive. Just because a person has depression doesn't mean they're completely incapable of doing anything, and can't take actionable steps to make themselves feel more proactive/better about preserving the intimacy in their relationship. Even if it's not something that can be done in the deepest darkest depths of depression, there are things that can be done when you feel yourself falling into and coming out of depression that can help, and this book offered NONE of that.
I was also pretty offended at how even though most of the questions were given in a very open and non-gender specific format, then answers would assume/attribute issues to a specific gender.
Don't waste your time on this one. There are many other resources out there that provide better information and offer actionable tools/exercises/steps on the topic of intimacy and depression.
Displaying 1 of 1 review