What's it like to have an incurable, but manageable disease? One that changes your perceptions of the world around you, loosens your inhibitions or cripples your ability to do anything? Kay Redfield Jamison pours out her experience of living with a mood disorder, using descriptive, image-evoking prose.
This book contains her life story, told from the point, not just of a disease sufferer, but also from the standpoint of a healer. Dr. Jamison is both. As a psychotherapist & professor of psychiatry, not only did she write a definitive book on the treatment of manic-depressive illness, but she also suffers from the disease herself.
We read her first-person account of how the disease snuck into her life. How parts of it were seductive and alluring, how she enjoyed having the extra energy, the industry; but also how that energy would turn to mania, would be damaging. Then we learn how dark, how bleak the downs could be. She exposes her struggle with medication, how she felt it limited her, how difficult it was to find and maintain the correct dose. We learn about the impact of her disease on her relationships.
She examines the path of manic-depressive illness in her life and paints a picture for the reader. One cannot put this book down without being touched. If you, or somebody you know, suffers from a mood disorder, this book is =REQUIRED= reading. If you would like a deep insightful read, not only will you enjoy this book, but you'll come away from it with a new appreciation for living with a chemically balanced brain.
Book Description
When a person loves someone with bipolar disorder, life can be very stressful. From medication troubles to a partner's mood swings the demands on a partner can be intense. Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder takes a unique and practical approach to these issues.
Written by an author who has bipolar disorder (and who lived with a partner who also has bipolar disorder) and a coauthor with over ten books on the topic of mental illness, the book offers specific, practical and realistic tips on how a couple can work together as a team to create a treatment plan that teaches them to live with the illness while still maintaining a loving and joyful relationship. (Though this book is written for couples, friends and family members can use the techniques in the book as well.)
Loving Someone with Bipolar Disorder provides hope and encourages couples to work together to create a plan they can use to help stabilize bipolar disorder so that their relationship can focus on love and companionship instead of the illness. Chapters include ideas on how to create a comprehensive treatment plan that incorporates medications and supplements, diet, exercise and behavior and lifestyle changes into one practical approach to this very serious illness. The partner of a person with bipolar disorder learns about communicating with their partner when they're ill, getting real about the situation and how to take on other roles in healing besides caretaking. Other specific topics include work and money, emotions, sexual issues and much more. The goal of the book is to help couples create a relationship that is based on support and prevention instead of constant crisis control.
Book Description:
This book has become a classic, and with good reason. Some books on emotional stuggles are written as if we human beings do not have a spiritual side. Other books are written as if the proper prescription for all emotional struggles is, "Take two Bible verses and call me in the morning." Some are written from such a deep clinical perspective that they are actually worse than useless to the layperson. This book is not like that.
If you, or someone you know, struggles with depression, this book is worth considering.
If you, or someone you know, holds onto pains from the past and nurses them to the point of ill-health, this book is worth considering.
If you are a professional counselor and don't have much experience with "Christian counseling", this book is worth considering.
If you are a pastor or other religious professional, but don't have much experience with counseling from a clinical perspective, this book is worth considering.
Actually, this book is so well written, that if you are breathing and have the ability to read this review, this book is worth considering. It should be in every personal library. You never know when you will be confronted with someone who needs your friendship and care.
Although D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones's "Spiritual Depression: Its Causes and Its Cure" is nearly forty years old, the truth it speaks to a generation lost amid a plethora of pop-psychology books is timeless. Jones, long the pastor of Westminster Chapel, gives readers the benefit of his many years of preaching and counseling, paving the way for the lost to find their way home.
Psychology and Christianity have two dichotomous worldviews that cannot be shoehorned into each no matter how hard anyone tries. Psychology attempts to bolster the inner self, while Christianity says that the inner self is so hopelessly corrupt that it must be replaced with something entirely new. To this end Jones points out that all depression has its root in sin and works from that point to lead readers into an understanding that only in Christ can release from the bondage of self come.
In the pages of this work, we find Jones addressing the following issues that many who are downcast find themselves afflicted by:
* Lack of a foundation in Christ
* Lack of clarity
* Poor spiritual balance between the mind, heart, and will
* Inability to receive forgiveness for all their sins
* Inability to move beyond past failures
* Fear of the future
* Placing too much confidence in emotions
* Faulty love of oneself and a general contempt for others
* Lack of faith
* Seeing only bad and not good
* Bondage to dead legalism
* Failing to recognize false teachings
* Weariness
* Lack of discipline
* Failure to handle trials appropriately
* Failure to respond correctly to chastening
* Bitterness
Jones does a marvelous job of breaking down each of these traits found in those in the doldrums and sheds the light of Scripture on each as he takes a solely Christian look at the root of these problems and how to deal with them biblically. Best of all, at no time does he attempt to mix in solutions from pop-psychology in order to achieve wholeness. His answers are more real and more true to the heart of the depressed. Anyone who feels downtrodden will take enormous comfort in the gentle, but firm words here.
