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Surviving America's Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy
Millions of us have experienced periods of low morale, struggled to find cheer in the day-to-day world, and then found ourselves pacified into believing the smooth-talking spokesperson in yet another medication ad. We’ve all heard them, there’s no denying the fact that these ads have made each of us Do I suffer from depression? Would I be happier and healthier if I simply consulted my physician and requested (insert drug name here)? The rate of clinical depression in the U.S. has increased more than tenfold in the last fifty years. Is this epidemic properly being addressed by the insurance, pharmaceutical, and governmental powers-that-be or exacerbated by a failing system focused on instant results and high profit margins? Dr. Bruce E. Levine, a highly respected clinical psychologist, argues the latter and provides a compelling alternative approach to treating depression that makes lasting change more likely than with symptom-based treatment through medication. Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic delves into the roots of depression and links our increasingly consumer-based culture and standard-practice psychiatric treatments to worsening depression, instead of solving it. In an easy-to-understand narrative style, Dr. Levine prescribes antidotes to depression including the keys to building morale and selfhealing. Unlike short-term, drug-based solutions, these antidotes foster a long-term cycle where people rediscover passion and purpose, and find meaning in acting on their societal concerns. A groundbreaking work, atypical of the shelf-loads of “pep-talk” based self help books on the market, Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic provides the knowledge and counsel of a practicing psychologist in a digestible format that will improve your future. A must read for guidance and pastoral counselors; non-dogmatic psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers; and those tired of the TV ads shilling for better living through chemistry.
240 pages, Paperback
First published October 26, 2007
About the author
Bruce E. Levine
9 books44 followersBruce E. Levine writes and speaks widely on how society, culture, politics and psychology intersect. His latest book is Get Up, Stand Up: Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite (2011). Earlier books include Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy (2007) and Commonsense Rebellion: Taking Back Your Life from Drugs, Shrinks, Corporations, and a World Gone Crazy (2003).
A practicing clinical psychologist often at odds with the mainstream of his profession, he is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, CounterPunch, AlterNet, and Z Magazine. His articles and interviews have been published in Adbusters, Truthout, The Ecologist, High Times, and numerous other magazines, and he has contributed chapters to Writing without Formula (2009), Perspectives on Diseases and Disorders: Depression (2009), and Alternatives beyond Psychiatry (2007).
Dr. Levine is on the editorial advisory board of the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, and he is an editorial advisor for the Icarus Project/Freedom Center Harm Reduction Guide to Coming off Psychiatric Drugs. A longtime activist in the mental health treatment reform movement, he is a member of the International Society for Ethical Psychology & Psychiatry as well as MindFreedom. Dr. Levine has presented talks and workshops to diverse organizations throughout North America.
Bruce E. Levine was born in 1956, grew up in Rockaway in New York City, graduated from Queens College of the City University, and received his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Cincinnati. He currently lives in Cincinnati with his wife, Bon.
A practicing clinical psychologist often at odds with the mainstream of his profession, he is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, CounterPunch, AlterNet, and Z Magazine. His articles and interviews have been published in Adbusters, Truthout, The Ecologist, High Times, and numerous other magazines, and he has contributed chapters to Writing without Formula (2009), Perspectives on Diseases and Disorders: Depression (2009), and Alternatives beyond Psychiatry (2007).
Dr. Levine is on the editorial advisory board of the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, and he is an editorial advisor for the Icarus Project/Freedom Center Harm Reduction Guide to Coming off Psychiatric Drugs. A longtime activist in the mental health treatment reform movement, he is a member of the International Society for Ethical Psychology & Psychiatry as well as MindFreedom. Dr. Levine has presented talks and workshops to diverse organizations throughout North America.
Bruce E. Levine was born in 1956, grew up in Rockaway in New York City, graduated from Queens College of the City University, and received his PhD in clinical psychology from the University of Cincinnati. He currently lives in Cincinnati with his wife, Bon.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 30, 2016
Wise, in its way.
This is not a self-help book in the conventional sense. Rather, it belongs to a related class: the anti-self-help book, one that critiques self-help as focused on the too-quick answer and encourages something deeper, something orthogonal to the usual cultural nostrums.
Levine argues that most treatments for depression do not work. He is especially critical of Big Pharma and the new generation of SSRI-related psychotropic drugs. Levine is careful not to disparage any particular person who has found relief in the medication but, looking at the evidence, he finds that the drugs perform no better than placebos, deaden pain rather than address its causes, and are really just politically acceptable versions of illegal drugs and alcohol, often working on the same cellular receptors, even if via different mechanisms.
His point, though he never comes out and says it directly, seems to be that Prozac and its pharmaceutical children are no better than pot or alcohol for treating depression, and none of them are particularly good; they work for a time, then there's the need for higher doses, and lots and lots of bad side-effects.
The reason they kept getting prescribed, though, is only partly because of Big Pharma's power. The other reason is that they fit with America's culture of consumerism and optimism: everyone's supposed to be happy all the time. There should be a pill to cure anything. Illness, in our society, is the only acceptable reason to be unproductive; depression is an illness, and so it is acceptable: but it must also be cured.
Levine then offers a different model. It is never fully integrated, which is one of the reasons the book is less than five stars. There are lots of ideas here, but they are never quite coherent.
In one strand, Levine wants to argue that depression is acceptable, a normal part of life. It's pathological, he says, that American culture thinks the perfect life is a life without pain. There should be time for withdrawing and contemplation--for being non-productive--that is not attached to shame.
That's kind of a sub rosa theme, though. His main point is that depression is a failed coping mechanism. An individual has experienced pain and tries to deal with it by withdrawing; by becoming self-absorbed. Depression, though it doesn't feel like it, is a choice. It's not about neurotransmitters at all.
When one is depressed, he suggests, part of the problem is that one lacks motivation--morale, he calls it. Or energy. We each gain energy through different modes: ideas, being around people, control. He suggests that one strategy for overcoming this stage of depression--and this stage needs to be overcome before anything else can even begin to kick in, whatever it be, is to look to a different way of gaining energy. Try a different mode.
Once one has enough energy, then one can begin to confront the deep-down pains one is trying to protect themselves from. Here is where he is vague. He mentions that depression often comes associated with a great deal of shame--which wastes a lot of energy as one protects one's self-image--and the need to overcome the shame, but there's no step-by-step guide.
He offers, instead, a general view. That one needs to practice two things: faith and discipline. And faith can even be once removed: faith in faith. Acting as if one has faith. It is a way of getting out of one's own head and seeing the rest of the world, connecting. He mentions Spinoza and Buddha as models, as well as William James, who overcame his own depression by believing in the power of belief.
The faith, though, whatever it is, must be capacious, he emphasizes. It is to enough to have faith in good things. One's faith must be open enough to accept that the world contains bad things, too, horrible things.
Once healing is underway and one has a certain amount of motivation, discipline is important. (this is the point at which CBT therapies are most effective, he says.) In American culture, discipline is either coded negative, or a synonym for doing productive work and making lots of money. But there are other ways one can practice discipline: learning small skills. Undergoing a personal transformation. These connect the person to the world.
And once one is here, one can imagine practicing forgiveness and acceptance--of one's self, of others, of the world. Again, these are often seen as signs of weakness, but they are actually marks of respect.
Even self-acceptance, though, is only the first step to other changes: the dropping of defensiveness and the ego. But for the most part, most people are so far even from self-acceptance that imagining subsequent steps are wistful and wishful he says, but he tries anyway.
He bases these ideas around a kind of resilience that sees life as a game--not a winner-take-all, but playfulness. As one goes further, the ego is released. There is participation in meditation and-or prayer and-or music. One is connected to the natural world. Relationships become more mature--not in being perfect but in expecting imperfection, not curdling at the first sign of adversity or pain.
By the end, he's very pie-in-the-sky utopian, talking about organic communities that resist totalitarianism and the very culture-makers that promote the the bad image and bad treatments of the current depression industry.
This is not a self-help book in the conventional sense. Rather, it belongs to a related class: the anti-self-help book, one that critiques self-help as focused on the too-quick answer and encourages something deeper, something orthogonal to the usual cultural nostrums.
Levine argues that most treatments for depression do not work. He is especially critical of Big Pharma and the new generation of SSRI-related psychotropic drugs. Levine is careful not to disparage any particular person who has found relief in the medication but, looking at the evidence, he finds that the drugs perform no better than placebos, deaden pain rather than address its causes, and are really just politically acceptable versions of illegal drugs and alcohol, often working on the same cellular receptors, even if via different mechanisms.
His point, though he never comes out and says it directly, seems to be that Prozac and its pharmaceutical children are no better than pot or alcohol for treating depression, and none of them are particularly good; they work for a time, then there's the need for higher doses, and lots and lots of bad side-effects.
The reason they kept getting prescribed, though, is only partly because of Big Pharma's power. The other reason is that they fit with America's culture of consumerism and optimism: everyone's supposed to be happy all the time. There should be a pill to cure anything. Illness, in our society, is the only acceptable reason to be unproductive; depression is an illness, and so it is acceptable: but it must also be cured.
Levine then offers a different model. It is never fully integrated, which is one of the reasons the book is less than five stars. There are lots of ideas here, but they are never quite coherent.
In one strand, Levine wants to argue that depression is acceptable, a normal part of life. It's pathological, he says, that American culture thinks the perfect life is a life without pain. There should be time for withdrawing and contemplation--for being non-productive--that is not attached to shame.
That's kind of a sub rosa theme, though. His main point is that depression is a failed coping mechanism. An individual has experienced pain and tries to deal with it by withdrawing; by becoming self-absorbed. Depression, though it doesn't feel like it, is a choice. It's not about neurotransmitters at all.
When one is depressed, he suggests, part of the problem is that one lacks motivation--morale, he calls it. Or energy. We each gain energy through different modes: ideas, being around people, control. He suggests that one strategy for overcoming this stage of depression--and this stage needs to be overcome before anything else can even begin to kick in, whatever it be, is to look to a different way of gaining energy. Try a different mode.
Once one has enough energy, then one can begin to confront the deep-down pains one is trying to protect themselves from. Here is where he is vague. He mentions that depression often comes associated with a great deal of shame--which wastes a lot of energy as one protects one's self-image--and the need to overcome the shame, but there's no step-by-step guide.
He offers, instead, a general view. That one needs to practice two things: faith and discipline. And faith can even be once removed: faith in faith. Acting as if one has faith. It is a way of getting out of one's own head and seeing the rest of the world, connecting. He mentions Spinoza and Buddha as models, as well as William James, who overcame his own depression by believing in the power of belief.
The faith, though, whatever it is, must be capacious, he emphasizes. It is to enough to have faith in good things. One's faith must be open enough to accept that the world contains bad things, too, horrible things.
Once healing is underway and one has a certain amount of motivation, discipline is important. (this is the point at which CBT therapies are most effective, he says.) In American culture, discipline is either coded negative, or a synonym for doing productive work and making lots of money. But there are other ways one can practice discipline: learning small skills. Undergoing a personal transformation. These connect the person to the world.
And once one is here, one can imagine practicing forgiveness and acceptance--of one's self, of others, of the world. Again, these are often seen as signs of weakness, but they are actually marks of respect.
Even self-acceptance, though, is only the first step to other changes: the dropping of defensiveness and the ego. But for the most part, most people are so far even from self-acceptance that imagining subsequent steps are wistful and wishful he says, but he tries anyway.
He bases these ideas around a kind of resilience that sees life as a game--not a winner-take-all, but playfulness. As one goes further, the ego is released. There is participation in meditation and-or prayer and-or music. One is connected to the natural world. Relationships become more mature--not in being perfect but in expecting imperfection, not curdling at the first sign of adversity or pain.
By the end, he's very pie-in-the-sky utopian, talking about organic communities that resist totalitarianism and the very culture-makers that promote the the bad image and bad treatments of the current depression industry.
August 24, 2014
Everyone should read this book. It's terrifying how much this country has changed in just a few decades.
April 10, 2008
Contrary to what the title suggests this is not much of a "how to" book at all. Levine makes suggestions throughout the book, but it's really just a sober indictment of modern industrial society from a clinical psychologist's perspective. He spends a great deal of the book condemning mainstream psychology and especially psychiatry for treating problems with social causes as if they should and can be solved on the individual level.
My favorite part that comes to mind is his mention of Gautama Buddha as someone facing deep psychological turmoil. Levine says that Buddha was able to drop out of his society and meditate under a fig tree for several weeks when he faced his internal crisis. His legacy is a testament to the success of the method of psychological treatment he underwent. Contrast that to anyone in our hyper-policed industrial society who might decide to "drop out" and sit under a tree to meditate. "Most likely he would be picked up by the police, given a psychiatric evaluation, hospitalized, drugged, and perhaps electroshocked."
Levine's suggestions consist of little, obvious areas of our lives where we can escape the "assembly-line society:" make contact with people you can connect with; spend time in natural settings; find outlets for creative expression.
Worth reading.
My favorite part that comes to mind is his mention of Gautama Buddha as someone facing deep psychological turmoil. Levine says that Buddha was able to drop out of his society and meditate under a fig tree for several weeks when he faced his internal crisis. His legacy is a testament to the success of the method of psychological treatment he underwent. Contrast that to anyone in our hyper-policed industrial society who might decide to "drop out" and sit under a tree to meditate. "Most likely he would be picked up by the police, given a psychiatric evaluation, hospitalized, drugged, and perhaps electroshocked."
Levine's suggestions consist of little, obvious areas of our lives where we can escape the "assembly-line society:" make contact with people you can connect with; spend time in natural settings; find outlets for creative expression.
Worth reading.
December 14, 2009
I probably shouldn't say I've read this book. After all a skipped a chunk in the middle. However I really enjoyd his perseptiveness about humans and humanity in general. The chunk I skipped was where he was so positive about healing and healers. It was sort of disconcerting after he had made such a perfectly good case for being depressed in our socity. But after that he gos back to talking about life in a rational way so I don't know what little gleeful pollyeanna took over his computer and wrote that chapter.
January 16, 2012
Hmmm. This guy doesn't like meds much.
October 15, 2007
Levine is a really down-to-earth psychologist. He offers a lot of commonsense advice here. Anyone who is having a hard time with the mental health industry (and specifically with antidepressants) should read this book.
November 7, 2009
incredibly useful tool, broad and tender.
Read
February 1, 2011I was hoping for something more practical for an individual. This seemed more theoretical or almost like telling other pros how to deal with the people who come see them.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews