Rating: 
Summary: Stunning!
Review: This work takes the reader through the experience of Clinical Major Depression vividly. Lyrical prose describes a wonderful person beset with a horrible disease. I've read this book three times--Martha Manning's journey sounds so much like my own, through the bowels of despair and apathy--and given it to friends to help them understand why I can't just "snap out of it", or not act irritable, or not want to just sit and stare or sit and sleep; why I stop eating; why I cry; and then why it's worse when I stop crying. This is a wonderful, wonderful, empathic book that does more to explain depression to others than a dozen manuals could ever do.
Rating:
Summary: Putting Me at Ease
Review: To say this book saved my life may sound melodramatic, but is true nonetheless. I read this book soon after college, while in the throes of what was not my first episode of depression. Doctors had been recommending ECT for years, but I was scared to death of it, mostly because of the potential for memory loss. Since Manning is a therapist and obviously very educated, learning that she was able to resume her life without significant adverse effects was incredibly reassuring. Doctors always say "I'd recommend ECT to my mother if she were as depressed as you are." In Manning I found a mental health professional who not only would recommend it to her mother but would actually put herself through it, something I had previously been unable to believe about the doctors I had spoken with. In 1999, several years after reading "Undercurrents" for the first time, I experienced my worst depression yet. Re-reading this book helped me find the courage to try ECT, and I have been depression-free ever since. After 20 years of fighting off the beast, I had finally won and I felt I owed a considerable amount of my success to Manning. During one of my hospitalizations, I loaned this book to my mom. Manning describes what depression feels like in a way that I had previously been unable to and I felt her book would help my mom understand why I had attempted suicide so many times in the past. She did find it enlightening; although it made her sad to finally realize how I had been feeling, it did give her more clarity on the overwhelming helplessness associated with depression. Unfortunately, Ms Manning has not had the luck with ECT that I have. I had the opportunity to meet her at a book signing for another book to which she had contributed. I was so excited I was going to be able to thank her in person!!! Many other people showed up at the reading to ask her about "Undercurrents" as well; it was clear this book had a great impact on the people in attendance. While answering their questions, Manning revealed that ECT was not a cure-all for her. She has had to undergo subsequent treatments which have been less successful than the initial treatment she wrote about. In fact, at the time she was in the midst of another depressive episode, albeit a relatively mild one. As a result, she was less than gracious when people asked her to sign copies of "Undercurrents" that night.
Rating:
Summary: Inspirational
Review: To say this book saved my life may sound melodramatic, but is true nonetheless. I read this book soon after college, while in the throes of what was not my first episode of depression. Doctors had been recommending ECT for years, but I was scared to death of it, mostly because of the potential for memory loss. Since Manning is a therapist and obviously very educated, learning that she was able to resume her life without significant adverse effects was incredibly reassuring. Doctors always say "I'd recommend ECT to my mother if she were as depressed as you are." In Manning I found a mental health professional who not only would recommend it to her mother but would actually put herself through it, something I had previously been unable to believe about the doctors I had spoken with. In 1999, several years after reading "Undercurrents" for the first time, I experienced my worst depression yet. Re-reading this book helped me find the courage to try ECT, and I have been depression-free ever since. After 20 years of fighting off the beast, I had finally won and I felt I owed a considerable amount of my success to Manning. During one of my hospitalizations, I loaned this book to my mom. Manning describes what depression feels like in a way that I had previously been unable to and I felt her book would help my mom understand why I had attempted suicide so many times in the past. She did find it enlightening; although it made her sad to finally realize how I had been feeling, it did give her more clarity on the overwhelming helplessness associated with depression. Unfortunately, Ms Manning has not had the luck with ECT that I have. I had the opportunity to meet her at a book signing for another book to which she had contributed. I was so excited I was going to be able to thank her in person!!! Many other people showed up at the reading to ask her about "Undercurrents" as well; it was clear this book had a great impact on the people in attendance. While answering their questions, Manning revealed that ECT was not a cure-all for her. She has had to undergo subsequent treatments which have been less successful than the initial treatment she wrote about. In fact, at the time she was in the midst of another depressive episode, albeit a relatively mild one. As a result, she was less than gracious when people asked her to sign copies of "Undercurrents" that night.
Rating: 
Summary: A Life Beneath the Surface
Review: Undercurrents is a memoir by Martha Manning, Ph.D., who is a clinical psychologist and was a former professor of psychology at George Mason University.
Martha Manning's book raised many different opinions and thoughts to mind. She is so honest that her descent into such a haunting depression engages you in a whole new dimension of thought. Many books try and prove that depression is an illness worth looking at and worrying about. But this book does it. It really does. The author expresses the experience we call depression so vividly and passionately that a thousand other thoughts run through your mind at the same time. She not only is able to illustrate her melancholy with amazing words, but also seems to perceive the endless reactions that happen around her as she falls through the endless well of misery and pulls herself back up again. This book is very dramatic and painfully true, as you will see if you ever read it. But looking through all that you'd put it down that it's definitely an utterly depressing memoir but it isn't. She reflects a countless number of her experiences and thoughts with humor. In one year she is contains in a single book and one hundred and ninety seven pages both tears of confusion and tears of laughter.
Rating:
Summary: Courageous Revealing of Personal Pain
Review: Undercurrents is the diary of Martha Manning spanning nearly two years of her life, as she battles serve clinical depression. So much of what she goes through resonates so clearly with my own experiences. At one point when medication and psychotherapy are suggested she protests, "But I've felt like this all my life and I've gotten along okay." Dr. Bigelow explained, "All that means is that you have a high tolerance for pain and a lot of determination." Manning is a therapist by profession and now faces the newer teachings on depression when seeking her own treatment that depression is an illness completely out of a person's control. None of the medications worked for her she continued to slip away until she had ECT therapy but even afterward she still has to take antidepressants. It took a great deal of courage, considering she is a clinical psychologist, to publicly reveal how even she grasped at straws as she battled the illness within herself. I'd like to know more about her childhood and the reasons why there are so many alcoholic and drug dependant people in her family. I'm sure it's painful to talk about and very private but it would be beneficial to her audience who had similar experiences. This is a very good book for anyone to read who suffers from depression and those around him or her really need to study it. Manning does a great job expressing the outrage sufferers feel over the discrimination leveled against people who suffer from any sort of mental illness, as if we asked for it or like it's our fault. There's a great deal of treatment information and it helps to know that even trained health care professionals can be just a baffled by an illness when they are suffering from it as a lay person.
Rating:
Summary: Worth reading twice
Review: Undercurrents was surprisingly light reading for such a detailed look into the horror of depression. It was fast-paced and effortless, pulling me in so that I couldn't stop reading. Not only did it tell of the sadness, confusion, and emptiness of depression, but described the physical toll of despair and integrated symbolic memories from her childhood, creating an intimate relationship between herself and the entranced reader. I found a personal joy at her times of triumph and was totally afflicted by her stretches of torment
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