Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression

Penguin Press HC, The, 2008, Hardcover

Product Description

A groundbreaking, inspiring, and practical guide to healing depression without the use of antidepressants, from world-renowned, Harvard trained psychiatrist Dr. James S. Gordon
Each year, as many as twenty million Americans are diagnosed with clinical depression. Tens of millions more have low energy or feel unhappy and dissatisfied with their lives. And each year, American doctors write 189 million prescriptions for antidepressant drugs for these people. Dr. James Gordon, a Harvard Medical School-educated psychiatrist who founded and directs The Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, D.C., has been helping his patients find their way out of the darkness of depression for the past forty years. He has worked with everyone from high-powered Washington politicians to Hurricane Katrina victims, from overstressed doctors, lawyers, and stay-at-home moms to orphans from war-ravaged Kosovo and Gaza. Each one of Dr. Gordon’s patients is unique, but all suffer from some level of depression, and none are getting relief from the antidepressant drugs their doctors keep prescribing or the psychotherapy they’ve been receiving.
One of our country’s most distinguished psychiatrists and a pioneer in integrative medicine, Dr. Gordon believes that depression is not an end point, a disease over which we have no control. It is a sign that our lives are out of balance, that we’re stuck. It’s a wake-up call and the start of a journey that can help us become whole and happy, one that can change and transform our lives. Unstuck is a practical, easy-to-use guide explaining the seven stages of Dr. Gordon’s approach and the steps we can take to exert control over our own lives and find hope and happiness. Unstuck is designed for anyone who is suffering from depression, from mild subclinical depression (“the blues”) to its severest forms.
Dr. Gordon shows us how doctors and patients alike have come to depend on antidepressants, and how these drugs have disappointed so many. He then carefully links each of his seven stages to helpful suggestions for relieving depression’s symptoms. Using dramatic and inspiring examples from the patients he has worked with over the years, he explains the useful, mood-healing benefits of: food and nutritional supplements; Chinese medicine; movement, exercise, and dance; psychotherapy, meditation and guided imagery; and spiritual practice and prayer. He concludes each chapter with a carefully designed Prescription for Self-Care, guidelines to help each person play an active, effective role in their own healing. The result is Unstuck, an incredibly thoughtful, practical, and meditative guide to the difficult but rewarding journey out of depression. James

Product Details

Title: Unstuck: Your Guide to the Seven-Stage Journey Out of Depression
Sales Rank: 3135 in Books
Author: James S. Gordon M.D.
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The, 2008-06-12, Hardcover, 448 pages, ISBN: 1594201668
Package Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.6 inches, 1.55 pounds

Customer Reviews

An extremely important book...: Congrat. to the author. While the book may argue a bit too strongly against drugs to "cure' depression, this only minutely offsets the bs written in most books by shrinks who dispense SSRIs and so on like candy.
I was given SSRIs a long time ago when they were fairly new to the market. Paxil to be precise. The word was… More reviews

I loved this book: Having been through a depression or two myself, and having had limited results with medication, I love the way this book approaches the subject. I think our society just relies too heavily on medication for an illness that goes so much further beyond creating a cure for a "chemical imbalance". I realize this may not be for everyone, and some people… More reviews

Nice treatise, but a couple of troubling things...: I'm almost sorry that I read this book. On one hand, the author really put together a fairly comprehensive and well-thought out set of treatment recommendations. I have no doubt that there would be tremendous benefit to the wholistic approach of yoga, meditation, social interaction, improved diet, and exercise, etc. in overcoming many instances of depression - but not all. In the depths… More reviews

The organic solurion to depression: Jim Gordon's Unstuck is the first book I know of that gives away the store. To gain this insight in the past would have cost you years of therapy, drug testing and miserable years of life. In this book you get all of it summarized and explained in depth. By reading this book you can help yourself and avoid all the wasted… More reviews

The Most Helpful Book On Depression I've Ever Read: Having suffered from chronic depression for most of my adult life, I admit that I began reading this book with some doubt and trepidation. I have read many books on depression, including Peter Kramer's books and many others. I have been on several anti-depressants over the years, but found something lacking eventually with all of them. I have also tried… More reviews