Where the Roots Reach for Water: A Personal & Natural History of Melancholia

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Summary: From Someone Who's Been There
Review: As a case manager counselling depressives, Jeffery Smith is responsible for keeping his clients on their meds - even after he decides, for himself, to go "off med." Smith suffers from a virulent depression that resists treatment, and here is where his memoir begins.

His beautiful prose takes us to the appalachian landscape of his childhood and into the shadows of his consciousness as he gives up on medication and tries instead to reconcile himself with melancholia. Somewhere along the way, at a professional conference, an expert is asked to define depression; after a looooong, thoughtful pause, the expert says, "Depression is knowledge."

This is a courageous and beautiful memoir positing a different attitude to a condition which is increasingly pervasive in our society, and yet hard to define exactly. By exploring his experience spiritually and historically, not just as clinically, Smith offers many ways to view depression and, hence, many possibilities for accepting what it may be showing us.

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Summary: My favorite book about depression
Review: As a depressive who has been on antidepressants for four years, I felt it was time to begin researching about this condition. I read at least a half dozen books, such as William Styron's memoirs, Richard O'Connor's self-help book, Joseph Glenmullen's anti-drug "Prozac Backlash," Kathy Kronkite's collection of conversations with famous depressives, and Andrew Solomon's excellent and comprehensive work "Noonday Demon." Jeffery Smith's book, "Where the Roots Reach for Water," is by far my favorite.

Weaving the history of melancholia with intimate personal narrative and rapturous nature writing, Smith constructs a rich landscape of depression. Fascinating even for those who do not suffer from the disease, the book is -- if you will excuse the word -- inspirational for those who do suffer from depression. Since antidepressant drugs do not work for Smith, he has to find a way to accomodate depression into his life.

"What does your depression want from you?" his therapist asks. Your depression isn't going anywhere. Even if you are currently in remission, it's likely to recur. So what does it want from you -- what do you need to do in order to live with it?

This question is profound, and Smith doesn't answer right away. Nor does he give a how-to list of steps to take to overcome depression. Indeed, the point of the book is that depression isn't something to be overcome, because that task may prove to be impossible. It is something you learn how to cope with, and even how to live your life fully and joyfully despite -- or perhaps in concert with -- your depression.

Who would want to read this book? Nature lovers will delight in the beautiful and sometimes surprising descriptions of landscapes. Historians who are interested in the evolution of "melancholia" into "depression" will find a very readable and entertaining overview. And anyone looking for insight into the experience of depression will find both a historical and a personal, individual perspective on the condition.

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Summary: Great Writing, Great History, Bad Psychology
Review: AS a psychologist who works with truly treatment-resistant depressives who have had abusive childhoods or horrible adulthoods, as an educator of psychology grad students, and as a person who has suffered from lifelong clinical depression, I plunged into this book as hungrily as the roots of the title. The writing is terrific. The scholarship on the "natural history" of psychology, the philosophy and history of the disease is terrific, and I learned a few things that I didn't know, even though I have taught history and systems of psychology. The descriptions of episodes of depression ring true.

But in the end the book disappointed me. Smith included bipolar disorder as well as unipolar clinical depression in his discussion of various aspects of melancholia, without noting that there are significant major differences between the two. While claiming to have "treatment resistant" depression, Smith showed his depression was really existential and situational after all, not truly biochemical and treatment resistant; the fact that it went away when he found the love of a good woman, found religion, and returned to his true home, shows that his depression was his heart's yearning for meaning and home, not his neurotransmitter receptors crying for the right dosage of biochemicals. For truly treatment-resistant depressives, even finding home, God and love can't keep the darkness away for long, and the ending of his book seemed too pat, too Hollywood simplistic to me.

Although I hope he is really cured of his depression, if Smith writes another book in a few years about how his melancholia returned in spite of finding home, love and God, then I think he does really have treatment-resistant depression. In the meantime, this book about a man who grew up surrounded by love, who had a happy childhood in a wonderful environment, had a good education and lots of choices, who chose to move away from that original home, and chose to work at jobs that were meaningful but supposedly "lower" than he was capable of, shows that even excellent drugs cannot overcome choices we make that do not meet our deepest needs. In cases like his, the optimum treatment for depression is to answer the heart's callings and make the right choices, not expect drugs to fix us. I don't think this book makes that point clearly enough - almost, but not quite.

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Summary: Helps you understand
Review: I think this has been one of the touching books I have ever read. My friend/lover/companion of 4 years just drifted away from me in his own bout of depression. The storm rolled in quickly and slowly. I don't know how to explain it, and he doesn't either.
Jeffery's book helped me to understand. And for that I am forever grateful. I pray that he comes through the other side.
Touching, saddening, inspiring. You must read this if someone you love is going through this.
I would love to thank the author. Maybe he will check these comments.

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Summary: a notable book
Review: I wish that I could have read this book 25 years ago

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Summary: unique approach to much-discussed subject
Review: Like many sufferers from depression in my experience, the author reached a point where his medication abruptly quit working. Others did not produce the desired result of the first, and instead of continuing playing med roulette, Smith stopped his and began the examination of his disorder that is recorded here. The author has no personal vendetta against the Western therapeutic institution, nor does he spend much time lingering on the disappointment of having the meds fail him. Instead, he takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of mood disorders from familial, historical, literary, and Eastern angles, to name a few.

He also describes what he learned from the mental health clients he works with, as well as his girlfriend. Smith does not shy away from describing several incidents that do not put him in the best light, and this paradoxically made me like him as narrator more.

Although some authors of depression memoirs have explored their moods from a historic or literary viewpoint, this one is the first I have read that weaves it into the narrative so richly.

Rating:
Summary: From Someone Who's Been There
Review: Like the author of this book, I've struggled with depression for years. I was drawn to it in a particularly dark time. Reading Smith's account was like hearing a friendly voice in the darkness. Smith validates the experience of anyone who has experienced depression, but he does more: he shares a personal account of one who has actually developed a relationship with his affliction. The possibility of this was a completely new insight for me and has changed my outlook on depression both as a phenomenon and as a personal experience. Things shifted for me as I read Smith's book and let the ideas sink in. I suspect the shift is permanent, because I haven't experienced depression the same way since then. It's a book I strongly recommend to others. I'd say it's one of the most significant mental-health books I've read in my life.

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Summary: Wayfaring Stranger in the Mountains of Melancholy
Review: Reading Jeffery Smith's memoir on depression is like watching someone attempt to assemble a pitch-black jigsaw puzzle: how, one wonders, will he differentiate a jig from a jag? How will he ever have the patience to root around for the answer in a crowded sea of clues which all resemble one big blot? Thing is, Smith sees his topic with a particular set of eyes, eyes which can disern color and pattern with only shape for guidance.

His astute, complex and compassionate understanding of melancholy reaches out to the reader in an effort to share information on a practical level, but ultimately his exploration will have you so engaged in his personal struggle that you may forget you're reading non-fiction. In the tradition of memoirs that read as compellingly as fiction (i.e., Tobias Wolff's "This Boy's Life"), Smith has created as ebullient a meditation as is possible on the subject. This is a roller coaster ride of sometimes absurdly heart-rending seeking. I finished it with a long sigh, and said out loud to myself, "Now, THAT'S a book!"

Highly recommended for anyone struggling with depression, but also simply for readers who enjoy an intellectually stimulating read on a subject in a previously predictable genre.

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Summary: The powerful story of one man's life with melancholia
Review: Where The Roots Reach For Water: A Personal & Natural History Of Melancholia is the powerful story of one man's life with melancholia, written in his own words. Author Jeffery Smith was working as a psychiatric case manager in Montana when he started to suffer from clinical depression. His affliction was so severe that his prescribed antidepressants became inefficient at any dosage. Smith openly and candidly writes of what happend to him after he gave up his medications and changed his life in order to accommodate his depression. Poetic, saddening, but also written with quiet strength and will to live in spite of hardship, Where The Roots Reach For Water is an unforgettable memoir and fascinating reading for students of psychology, as well as the friends and family of anyone suffering from a similiar condition.

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Summary: More light!
Review: With prose that is always lucid, and often lyrical, Jeffrey Smith describes his attempt to integrate his depression into his life as a whole. To this reader, some of his survival strategies seem wrong-headed: he time and again seeks solace in the wilderness (rarely finding it), his choice of pet is all wrong (trade in the skittish cat for a german shepherd puppy), and his chosen work (with the halt and the lame) couldn't be more depressing.

That said, his natural history of melancholia will provide a tonic for many a reader. He's dug up some fascinating insights and speculations about those of us who live under the sign of Saturn, much of which is passed over in silence by our current vocabulary for discussing depression.

Finally, it's unfortunate that the author is so dismissive of psychoanalysis. Not the therapy, but Freud's worldview, his admirable stoicism, has served some of us very well (see FREUD: THE MIND OF THE MORALIST, by Philip Rieff).