Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone Crazy

The rate of depression in the U.S. has increased tenfold in the last fifty years, indicating an underlying social issue as well as a health challenge. Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic: How to Find Morale, Energy and Community in A World Gone Crazy surveys the roots of these issues, discussing how to revitalize depressed people and a depressing culture and offering insights on how to change ideas and behavior patterns. Both college-level holdings strong in psychology and general-interest lending libraries will find this a most accessible account identifying the foundations of societal depression and offering plenty of insights on how to combat it.

Diane C. Donovan

California Bookwatch
Rating: 5 / 5

…and I have read many. The author discusses aspects and causes of depression ignored by mainstream psychiatry and offers compelling solutions with integrity, honesty, and compassion.

Also worth looking at:

When Panic Attacks: The New, Drug-Free Anxiety Therapy That Can Change Your Life

The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness
Rating: 5 / 5

This book is much more than a self-help book–the issue is bigger than any one individual. All of us, whether we’re depressed ourselves or not, have been touched by depression through friends, family, and colleagues. This book helps make sense of it all and offers suggestions about how, collectively, we get on the road to recovery. I am recommending this book to people at every opportunity. Dr. Levine hits the nail on the head.
Rating: 5 / 5

Bruce Levine does two radical things in this book: he questions the psychiatric profession and looks at depression in the context of American Society. He does this even-handedly and with great care.

He begins by providing an overview of anti-depression drugs, citing considerable evidence that these drugs are not effective. Including a survey of 47 drug-company sponsored studies published by the American Psychological Association where “the anti-depressant failed to outperform a sugar-pill.” Another study from Duke University found that exercise was more effective in treating depression than Zoloft.

Levine looks at what science knows about the brain and depression. He tells us that despite all the drugs and modern therapy, people in this country are more depressed than ever. He cites one study, for example, that found Mexican-Americans born in the U.S. have depression rates three times higher than recent immigrants from Mexico. Those same immigrants, after just 13 years in the country, catch up to the native-born Americans in their rate of depression.

Levine then looks at how our culture contributes to our unusually high rates of depression. “Technology is all about control, and the more Americans singularly worship technology, the more we singularly worship control,” he writes. “Our society is increasingly dominated by megatechnologies–huge, complex, technologies that most of us neither understand or can control.” This loss of control is a key component of depression. Levine also discusses social isolation, cultural pressures to be perpetually happy, consumerism’s failure to meet real human needs, and the American discomfort with difference, to mention just a few.

Most of the book is a discussion of how to be sane in a world “gone crazy.” As someone who was once diagnosed with depression, I found the book honest, wise and helpful.
Rating: 5 / 5

I have just finished reading this book, and I am so grateful for every chapter. Other books on depression have left me feeling more confused, not less. I had read articles by Levine before and felt he was on point at analyizing why depressed people, including myself, are not being helped by current treatments. This book delivers valuable insights into how Big Pharma and its allies have won the minds, hearts and money of Americans. It also brilliantly takes to task America’s skewed values – while offering energizing ideas for combating depression and crushed morale.
Rating: 5 / 5