Rating: 
Summary: Insightful & practical
Review: Richard O'Connor, a psychotherapist who has suffered from depression himself, recognizes that there are many approaches to understanding and healing depression, and rather than evangelizing one tidy but inadequate ideology of depression, he shares his accumulated practical wisdom, which untidily but intelligently incorporates aspects of many approaches. How refreshing! How helpful!Medication and therapy can both help, he thinks, but we also need to replace depressive habits with new skills that therapy might not teach. The book focuses on these skills, grouped into five areas: emotions, behavior, thought processes, relationships (focusing on communication), and the sense of self. Lest that sound overwhelming, O'Connor notes that "you don't have to do it all at once. . . . Any chapter, any suggestion, may be enough to get you started on a self-reinforcing cycle of healthy behavior." Other books I've found helpful: John & Andrea Nelson's "Sacred Sorrows," a collection of essays on a wide variety of approaches to depression, including psychotherapeutic, psychiatric, and spiritual. Cheri Huber's "The Depression Book," on using depression as fodder for your spiritual practice. Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way," which I think is a powerful anti-depression book, even though it's not explicitly about depression and even if you have no special interest in being an "artist." William Appleton's "Prozac and the New Antidepressants." Hyla Cass's "St. John's Wort."
Rating: 
Summary: Undoing Depression by Richard O'Connor
Review: I recommend this book to anyone who is suffering from depression. It's a quick read and it examines depression directly and honestly. The diction is lively and descriptive, not boring and clinical. It doesn't provide any quick fixes or easy answers, although I'm certain that anyone who suffers from clinical depression already knows that there are no easy answers or quick cures. Best of all, the book is never patronizing; the author writes from the viewpoint not only as a psychoanalyst but also as a patient himself.
Rating:
Summary: Helpful book!
Review: This is a great book. The author shows the reader the root problem and how depression develops in the early stages, then analyses it, and explains how depression can be undone. The book deals with the mind and how patterns of depression evolve. The tips and explanations should help every depression victim. I also enjoyed another book that I strongly recommend as it's so very helpful, which is Dietmar Scherf's "I Love Me: Avoiding & Overcoming Depression."
Rating: 
Summary: a good book to start with
Review: If you have just been diagnosed with depression, or someone who is close to you has, and you just want an overview of what depression is all about, then this is a good book to read as a first step. It brings together a lot of valuable general information and is written with experience and compassion. It will be of help to you if you are mildly depressed or even if you are merely unhappy with your life, but if you are a sufferer of major depression, this book is just not specific enough, it is too simplistic, and it does not contain anything new. There are chapters in the middle that discuss things like families, love, marriage, divorce, etc, that are in my opinion quite irrelevant. The author admits that there is no one definite theory of the cause and treatment of depression, and so attempts to cover all the different approaches and put them together as package. This approach, whilst valid in theory, can be an overwhelming burden to juggle for a depressed person, who is made to feel that if he/she is not doing it all perfectly - keeping a mood journal, keeping a daily record of dysfunctional thoughts, eating well, in intense therapy, analyzing everything, etc - then he/she is not doing all they can to get well and this can make a depressed person feel a lot of needless guilt. I am very sceptical of this catch-all approach, it puts too much pressure on a depressed person for not nearly enough of a gain in their recovery. This approach will often make a depressed person feel that if they cannot manage all this constant self-actualization and exercises and analysis, etc (which they often can't - because they are depressed) that it then must be their own weakness making them depressed; this is extremely counter-productive. It is also unfortunate because some of the techniques can be of some help, but not if they are simplified and all jumbled together. Having said all this, I do appreciate what the author is trying to do. This book is useful if you take from it what you think can help you right now, doing only what you can and want to, leaving the rest for another time. It won't change your life, but it will get you started and point you in the right directions for further help.
Rating:
Summary: Finally, Some Hope
Review: This is a book that teaches you how to take control of your depression. It acknowledges that depression is a very real, very serious disorder but it also shows you how to get on with your life and not become a victim to it.
Rating:
Summary: I read it again and again.
Review: Rather than giving the reader the simplistic solutions found in so many other books, Undoing Depression enables you to identify the behaviors that are causing harm--then shows how to replace them with healthier ways to live. Comparing O'Connor to Huber is like comparing Seat of the Soul or Man's Search for Meaning with Chicken Soup for the Soul. There's room for both. Sometimes a light touch is what one needs, a new age style is where one is comfortable. However, what I believe is that ten years from now, O'Connor's book will be the one that remains an important work in the literature.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting and illuminating, but...
Review: if you are depressed while reading the book you may run the risk of appropriating some of the many depressive attributes listed, even though they don't apply. While the book is jampacked with helpful information on depression it is probably most helpful to family and friends of depressives who seek to understand the nature, symptoms and impact of depression. I would steer depressives seeking the most constructive tools for overcoming depression to the works of Cheri Huber.
Rating:
Summary: Important work on habits of depressives
Review: Richard O'Connor has written a well argued work on how our habits as depressives need to be understood and changed to minimize recurring episodes. Putting our behavior in context, his message is different from Peter Kramer's look at pyschopharmacology (and its detractors), and is a refreshing investigation and presentation.
Rating:
Summary: Undoing Depression has helped me change my life.
Review: Richard O'Connor, in Undoing Depression, has combined research, theory, and wisdom to create a book that has had a profound effect on my life. I can't praise the work enough and wish everyone the good fortune to find it.
Rating:
Summary: A Must for Anyone Affected by Depression
Review: This is the best book I've read on depression. It's smart, straight-forward and incredibly useful, offering exercises for living without depression. O'Connor is refreshing in his practicality, compassion - and most of all, his experience with the subject. I recommend it highly.
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