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This book describes the depressive in his or her natural habitat, studies the everyday problems that cause one's depression, and develops treatment approaches directed to the depressive's real-world plight. It explores the borderland between the sacred and the profane, the academic and the popular, the scientific but impractical, and the practical but unscientific. It relies as much on common sense, anecdote, and individual insight as it does on case histories and psychological test protocol.
The book is divided into four sections: description, cause, prevention, and treatment. The descriptive section presents the mental-status abnormalities in depression, includes a differential diagnosis of classic depressive symptoms, indicates when so-called classic symptoms of another disorder are in fact depressive, lists the physical complaints that are the product of depression, discusses normal depression, and touches briefly on hypomania. The section on cause recognizes that real troubles are common and chemical troubles rare. It suggests that people do not get depressed because they are under stress or they have suffered loss, but, in simple language, because their boss has threatened to fire them, their wife has threatened to leave, the cat has died, and other similar real-life difficulties. It faces the problems that therapists and patients alike find unpalatable, shameful, and threatening--the things that cause patients to close their eyes or speak in remote euphemisms. The sections on prevention and therapy are not attached to any one school of thought. They are formulated and expressed simply and humanistically, and offer common-sense solutions to the depressives's everyday problems with themselves and their world.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Preface
DiagnosisPrecision of Diagnosis
Depressive Behaviors
Normal Depression
Physical Manifestations of Depression
The Association between Depression and Other Symptoms/Syndromes
Positive Aspects of Depression
Hypomania
CauseIntroduction to Primarily Internal (Self-Created) Depressogenesis
Internal Events
Primarily External Depressogenesis: Depressogenic Situations
Primarily External Depressogenesis: Depressogenic People Classified According to Behavior
PreventionPrevention of Depression
TreatmentIntroductory Remarks/Handling Internal Depressogenesis
Handling External Depressogenesis: Depressogenic Situations
Treatment of Specific Symptoms
Specific Treatment Techniques: General Considerations
Specific Treatment Techniques: Specific Modalities
Dealing with Others in the Patient's Life
Pharmacotherapy and Shock Therapy
Dark Sides/Complications and Errors of Therapy
Selected Bibliography
Index
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Martin Kantor, MD is a Harvard psychiatrist who has been in full private practice in Boston and New York City, and active in residency training programs at several hospitals, including Massachusetts General and Beth Israel in New York. He also served as Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Medical School and as Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-New Jersey Medical School. He is currently a full-time medical author, the author of more than a dozen other books, including
Homophobia, Second Edition (Praeger 2009);
Uncle Sam's Shame: Inside the Veteran's Administration (Praeger 2008);
Lifting the Weight: Understanding Depression in Men: Its Causes and Solutions (Praeger 2007);
The Psychopathy of Everyday Life: How Antisocial Personality Disorder Affects All of Us (Praeger, 2006);
Understanding Paranoia: A Guide for Professional, Families, and Sufferers (Praeger 2004);
Distancing: Avoidant Personality Disorder, Revised and Expanded (Praeger, 2003),
Passive-Aggression: A Guide for the Therapist, the Patient, and the Victim (Praeger, 2002),
Treating Emotional Disorder in Gay Men (Praeger, 1999), and
Homophobia (Praeger, 1998).
