Reddit reviews Manic-Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression, 2nd Edition

Because they aren't legit. You are most likely reading pseudoscience.

Don't google self-help books. Depression isn't something you usually self-help. It's something you get professional help with, it's a fairly complex mental disorder, it's not something that a stranger can help you cure through a book.

If you want serious books on it, look at medical psychiatric textbooks only. If you want to learn more about treatments rather than about depression, look at psychiatric/psychologist guides (Official ones released my journal of medicine blablabla)

I haven't checked these at all but some less official ones I quickly found were:

http://www.amazon.com/Depression-Treatment-Aaron-T-Beck/dp/0812219643

http://www.amazon.com/Manic-Depressive-Illness-Disorders-Recurrent-Depression/dp/0195135792

Or rather check a book like this, there should be chapters on depression: http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-11th-David-G-Myers/dp/1464140812

This is the book on the topic, although I haven't yet scraped up the cash for it and doubt my cognitive capacity is up to it:

https://www.amazon.com/Manic-Depressive-Illness-Disorders-Recurrent-Depression/dp/0195135792

I just ordered this book about cognitive dysfunction in bipolar disorder and am looking forward to reading it:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1585622583

Here you go! You recommended everything I was going to recommend so I thought I'd make your links easier to click.

>All of these are useful:
>
>An Unquiet Mind
>
>Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide
>
>The Bipolar Workbook: Controlling Swings
>
>The Mindful Way Through Depression
>
>The last book describes a self-guided therapy that I used to lift myself out of a mixed mood a few years ago. I was willing to do anything to get better and that included doing things that I had little to no faith in but I still had to try. It worked despite my skepticism. I believe in it now.
>
>and then there is the bible of the illness and its treatment. It's massive and very technical (written for medical professionals) but you might find parts of it useful.
>
>Manic Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression
>

The same for me. One the skills I was most proud of was my ability to speak and write persuasively. Now I stumble over words, use basic vocabulary, and take an hour to write a simple email. Calculus used to be easy for me and now simple addition requires pen and paper. And I cannot retain new information no matter how hard I try. All of these symptoms became so awful that I had to leave grad school. I went to a top US school for undergrad, and the #2 school for my choice in grad programs, and all that education and money was for nothing. Not surprisingly, this severely limits the jobs I am able to perform when I can't remember what I once learned and can't learn new information. It's ruined my career path, my dating life, and basically how I feel about myself.

I wish I could say it gets better, but I am about 16 years out of when I first started noticing symptoms. That said, I have chronic major depression, so maybe if you come out, it might get better. I've had the full neuro workup so for me, depression is the likely culprit. I agreed to ECT a few years back when it reached a point that it didn't seem like losing any more of my memory would matter much. I saw you mentioned TMS. I had that as well. It didn't work for me, but that does not affect memory so don't save that for a last resort.

This is from Goodwin and Redfield Jamison

Most mental activity is markedly slowed during depression... thinking is difficult to the patient, a disorder which he describes in the most varied phrases. He cannot collect his thoughts or pull himself together; his thoughts are as if paralyzed, they are immobile... He is no longer able to perceive, or to follow the train of thought of a book or a conversation, he feels weary, enervated, inattentive, inwardly empty; he has no memory, he has no longer command of knowledge formerly familiar to him, he must consider a long time about simple things, he calculates wrongly, makes contradictory statements, does not find words, cannot construct sentences correctly... Patients have no ideas. They complain of a complete disruption of memory. They feel their poverty of performance and complain of the inefficiency, lack of emotion and emptiness... Cognitive changes during depression can be both subtle or profound and often are a combination of both. depressed patients frequently complain that their process of thinking has slowed down. They are confused and ruminative, cannot concentration, and feel inadequate and useless. John Custance wrote, "I seem to be in a perpetual fog and darkness. I cannot get my mind to work; instead of associates "clicking into place" everything is inextricable jumble; instead of seeming to grasp it as a whole, it seems to remain tied to the actual consciousness of the moment. The whole world of my thought is hopelessly divided into incomprehensible watertight compartment. I could not feel more ignorant, undecided, of inefficient. It is appallingly difficult to concentrate, and writing is pain and grief to me."

Im an engineer and people have bought me comfort books but when I sought the most information I could. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195135792/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 was my choice. The beginning has quite a good overview of some history and delves into every aspect of the disorder as it is the go to textbook. This may be too much unless you're trying to understand bipolar disorder down to the neuroscience like me.

All of these are useful:

http://www.amazon.com/An-Unquiet-Mind-Memoir-Madness/dp/0679763309/ref=pd_sim_b_1
http://www.amazon.com/Bipolar-Disorder-Survival-Guide-Second/dp/1606235427/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344813038&sr=1-5&keywords=bipolar+workbooks
http://www.amazon.com/The-Bipolar-Workbook-Controlling-Swings/dp/1593851626/ref=pd_sim_b_5
http://www.amazon.com/Mindful-Way-through-Depression-Unhappiness/dp/1593851286/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344813575&sr=1-1&keywords=mindful+way+through+depression

The last book describes a self-guided therapy that I used to lift myself out of a mixed mood a few years ago. I was willing to do anything to get better and that included doing things that I had little to no faith in but I still had to try. It worked despite my skepticism. I believe in it now.

and then there is the bible of the illness and its treatment. It's massive and very technical (written for medical professionals) but you might find parts of it useful.

http://www.amazon.com/Manic-Depressive-Illness-Disorders-Recurrent-Depression/dp/0195135792/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344813893&sr=1-1&keywords=manic+depressive+illness

The price is to be expected. It's a medical textbook several hundred pages in length, with a multitude of contributors. Jamison is co-editor, with Frederick Goodwin. I have a copy of the second edition in hardcover, which cost $70. I'm not sure which edition the OP has, but here's a link to the one I have.

Have you read An Unquiet Mind by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison yet? She is one of the most well known clinical psychologists and actually helped author the main medical reference books for the inner workings of the disorder. She is also a patient and still struggles with BP1. The book covers her discovery/diagnosis, reluctance to Lithium therapy, and some very well described manic episodes direct from the horse's mouth.

This: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195135792/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1503337027&sr=8-2&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_FMwebp_QL65&keywords=manic+depressive+illness&dpPl=1&dpID=51z5iWlzyBL&ref=plSrch

It's one of most respected books on Bipolar.

See if you can find a copy of this in the library somewhere:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195135792/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=

1. The Bipolar Book: History, Neurobiology and Treatment
   
2. Manic-Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression, 2nd Edition
   
3. Behavioral Neurobiology of Bipolar Disorder and its Treatment
   
4. Genetics of Bipolar Disorder

Here's Dr. Phelp's overview of RDoC, with an interesting chart on how much psychiatrists agree and diverge on diagnoses. His whole psycheducation.org website is an awesome resource.

Look, if the treatment is the same it's kind of an academic argument about which category you fall into, like whether bipolar and borderline are two different things. It can be critical if the treatments are different, and if one tx is harmful in the other condition, like whether you are unipolar or bipolar.

My late father was a psychiatrist starting in the late 1950s. Can you imagine trying to treat manic depressives, as we were known then, without lithium, which wasn't approved in the US until 1970? And before bp-ii or the bipolar spectrum had even been thought about? Looking back, things have gotten a lot better for us.

So things aren't perfect but they're a lot better than they were. We have very limited understanding about how meds work but they're tested in clinical trials and they often do. It just takes a lot of trial and error to find the ones that work best for you.

You might want to read the bible of bipolar, Goodwin and Jamison's Manic Depressive Illness: Bipolar Disorders and Recurrent Depression. The history of the diagnosis might interest you.

TL;DR You know your brain is sick. You know you should take your meds. You're just going to have to try a bunch until you find what works for you and accept that in another 40 years what we do now will seem barbaric.