What do you think?
Rate this book
Flagging the Problem: A new approach to mental health
A practical guide to understanding and coping with anxiety, depression, addiction and suicide.
Flagging The Problem: A New Approach to Mental Health investigates how the mood system in the brain and the body works, and how problems in this system contribute to anxiety, depression, addiction and suicide.
Bestselling author and GP Dr Harry Barry reveals a pioneering system using a coloured flag which represents a particular mental state or area of concern:
- Green Flag explains the normal mood system
-The Red Flag deals with depression
- The Yellow Flag addresses anxiety
- The Purple Flag deals with addiction
- The White Flag addresses the issue of suicide.
Using this system to help readers visualise the illness and its symptoms, Dr Barry aims to provide hope to those suffering from depression, addiction, anxiety and suicidal thoughts and with it the possibility of a new life where the pain can be alleviated.
Previously published as Flagging the Problem: A New Approach to Mental Health, this edition has been fully revised and updated.
- GenresPsychologyNonfiction
286 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 15, 2007
3 people are currently reading
46 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 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 22, 2015
Green Flag - Normal Mood
Red Flag - Depression
Yellow Flag - Anxiety
Purple Flag - Addiction
White Flag - Suicide
Dr Harry Barry explains the mood system and brain in an engaging way and how under each section this can lead to mental illness. The book is quite technical but is very absorbing and informative.
Red Flag - Depression
Yellow Flag - Anxiety
Purple Flag - Addiction
White Flag - Suicide
Dr Harry Barry explains the mood system and brain in an engaging way and how under each section this can lead to mental illness. The book is quite technical but is very absorbing and informative.
August 29, 2021
My therapist recommended that I read this book, and because I want to get a good grade in therapy (something that is both reasonable to want and possible to achieve!!), I did so. However, I suspect she meant me to read Flagging the Therapy, not Flagging the Problem.
This book is very much a treatise on the conditions of depression, anxiety, addiction, and suicidal ideation, with a heavy focus on neuropathology and pathogenesis. It would, in fact, be a great book for medical students or clinicians who deal in mental health. However, I wasn’t approaching this as a doctor but as a patient. I was only interested in my own condition (anxiety) and looking for tips to ameliorate it, rather than having an academic interest in the subtypes of depression or the multifactorial aetiology of addiction. Moreover, this book justifiably highlights causes for all these conditions that boil down to: poverty, abuse, extreme trauma. It’s the kind of focus that for years added to my personal mental pile-on, because I am not poor, abused, or traumatised, so why the fuck are you so mentally fucked, dude? It was only with the discovery of writers willing to treat of middle-class white girls with massive Good Girl anxiety that I could see myself reflected in a way that was helpful for me in overcoming the worst of it.
None of which is Barry’s fault in the slightest – indeed, Flagging the ‘Therapy’ may be just the book I need for the next step. But I would definitely point this book at people who are, like, doing an exam in psych soon or something, rather than, say, people looking for help dealing with exam stress.
This book is very much a treatise on the conditions of depression, anxiety, addiction, and suicidal ideation, with a heavy focus on neuropathology and pathogenesis. It would, in fact, be a great book for medical students or clinicians who deal in mental health. However, I wasn’t approaching this as a doctor but as a patient. I was only interested in my own condition (anxiety) and looking for tips to ameliorate it, rather than having an academic interest in the subtypes of depression or the multifactorial aetiology of addiction. Moreover, this book justifiably highlights causes for all these conditions that boil down to: poverty, abuse, extreme trauma. It’s the kind of focus that for years added to my personal mental pile-on, because I am not poor, abused, or traumatised, so why the fuck are you so mentally fucked, dude? It was only with the discovery of writers willing to treat of middle-class white girls with massive Good Girl anxiety that I could see myself reflected in a way that was helpful for me in overcoming the worst of it.
None of which is Barry’s fault in the slightest – indeed, Flagging the ‘Therapy’ may be just the book I need for the next step. But I would definitely point this book at people who are, like, doing an exam in psych soon or something, rather than, say, people looking for help dealing with exam stress.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews