Tag Archives: depression

“Lincoln came close to killing himself in January 1841.”

In Flourish, Martin Seligman uses Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill as examples of “severe depressives” who learned to function well even when they were massively depressed.  Shouldn’t more people learn how to do this?  Yes,  says Seligman, former president of … Continue reading

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“You have to turn now to all the other wounded people around you, and find a way to connect with them.”

When Johann Hari comes to the final chapter in his book on depression, he offers the advice that he wishes he had received when he was diagnosed with clinical depression decades ago. He believes that instead of focusing on “chemical … Continue reading

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“I could feel nothing except the burden of my own life and the exhaustion, the apparent futility, of trying to sustain it.”

This week, the Centers for Disease Control released a report that said that suicide rates in the United States have risen nearly 30% since 1999. With the issue of mental health in the news so frequently lately, I am looking … Continue reading

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“You’re not going to be able to deal with this problem alone.”

The most radical idea in Johann Hari’s Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions is that treatment for depression shouldn’t focus on medication only.  Because depression has three kinds of causes – biological, psychological … Continue reading

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“Students who have experienced trauma and stress are not a small subpopulation of students.”

This book, like last week’s book, discusses “Adverse Childhood Experiences,” which is a set of 10 questions that assess the level of trauma kids experience.  These questions focus on exposure to mental illness, addiction, abandonment, hunger, physical abuse or danger, … Continue reading

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