Rating: 
Summary: Thoughts DO count
Review: A. B. Curtiss provides a needed countervoice to the chorus of
"experts" who insist that conditions like depression can
only be treated by drugs. A large body of evidence exists to affirm
that cognitive therapies that focus on alternatives to medications do
work. In "Depression is a Choice," Curtiss joins an esteemed
body of professionals who say that drugs may not be the magic bullets
mainstream psychologists claim they are.
Depression runs in my
own family. I am familiar with it both as a concept and as a
reality. Curtiss' overlooked point is we may not choose the
depression, but we often do choose to stay feeling depressed, and we
can choose to break the hold of depression. Her prescriptions do
work. Whether they work for everyone all the time is a question not
worth asking, because nothing works for everyone all the time. Her
book is worth considering, in my opinion, because anything that offers
an alternative to a "pop a pill" solution is worth
considering. If nothing else, her solution offers the hope that the
depression sufferer can take responsibility for the cure.
I
know the author, so I am not objective. "Directed thought" is much more than a "murky
offshoot of standard therapy." "Depression is a Choice"
is not written like a typical self-help bowl of pablum. Curtiss'
passion translates into prose that is far more lyrical than
overwritten. Judged against comparable books--such as the bestseller,
"Listening to Prozac"--it is a joy to read. The book
deserves much more than the reviewer gives it.
Rating:
Summary: AuthorZone.Com Book Review
Review: Depression is a Choice is a documentary, text book type work of 20 chapters in which a woman who is a therapist and well acquainted with depression offers some concrete insight and advice into depression and how to manage it through employing Directed Thought. Curtiss says Directed Thinking is a combination of awareness, understandings, formula thinking, and mind trips applied to depression; my own and others'.Chapter 2 addresses The Myth of Easy in which writer Curtiss points out that perhaps acknowledging that something is difficult somehow calls up the will to do it. Curtiss helps the reader understand that we humans do not have to function from instinct. We are able to choose rather to function from reason. Chapter 9 Depression : The Smoke and Mirrors of the Mind is one in which Curtiss states that while she continues to harbor all of the old fearful feelings she no longer feels powerless before them. She offers succinct methods for helping the reader reach this point as well. I especially enjoyed the humor found in Chapter 19: Working Hard at Keeping Sane. I like the idea that there is no requirement that we must happy in order to get up out of bed and get on with the day. Writer Curtiss presents her work in a very intelligible, readable manner. It is obvious the writer has done her research. She provides clear illustrations, some personal history and lots and lots of endnotes to back up her findings. Depression is a Choice should prove of value for therapist and layman alike as they work to solve their own problems or endeavor to help those suffering from the problem. For those who are suffering from depression they may well find exactly what they need on the pages of Depression is a Choice in order to begin their own climb from the morass. Reviewed by: molly martin
Rating:
Summary: Three Years Later.... Update
Review: I am cured. My depression is a thing of the past. You can read my other two reviews back in October of 2001. Once in awhile, I wake up, and I feel a little sad, or once in awhile, I recognize that I am depressed about something. I keep moving. I am so content with my life now. I am single, 34, happy. I really still have some things in my life that need work, so it's not like there are external circumstances that have caused this. The simple matter is that after reading "Depression Is a Choice", I was able to realize that I am not the victim I was taught to be. I am strong and capable and free now. It has been THREE YEARS. My life has been completely stable. I even went through a divorce which was not of my choosing, and another huge heartbreak, but the *depression* did not come back. This is because of what I learned from this absolutely life-changing, life-saving book. I am a new person. Healthy, happy, and strong. I used this book as a launching board to build my new life. I AM forever indebted and grateful to the author, Ms. Curtiss.
Rating: 
Summary: Frighteningly Biased
Review: I came to look at this book after reading the Author's review of "The Best Awful" by Carrie Fisher. Fisher's book is about a disasterous trip into mania, followed by a suicidal depression that lands her in the mental hospital... _because she went off of her medication_. The author of this book writes the following in her review: "The remarkable thing is that in a culture where manic depression is encouraged by psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies who have formed an unholy, if unwitting, alliance; here's some one who has escaped. Not unscathed, mind you. But free nevertheless.". This statement captured a level of bias that really frightened me. What kind of "freedom" involves running blindly through alleyways in Tijuana, bleeding, fleeing, high on opiates and a crashing mania? Or crashing into a stupor, spending days at a time staring at the wall while your child cries, wondering where her mother went, until your friends drag you away to a mental hospital? Sure, maybe some people, like the author, feel that life is just fine that way -- but I'm sure a lot of people _don't_.
For me personally, finding medication that stopped my bipolar moodswings WAS THE BEST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME IN MY ENTIRE LIFE. No amount of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy could "fix" me, until I was in enough control of my moods to actually think reasonably, with a coherent understanding that didn't reverse direction every week. In the author's bio, she speaks of having "left her husband and children for a year to live in an ashram". I couldn't get close to having a husband -- no one ever wanted to stay with me longer than a year; I was too unstable, violent to myself and others. I was not "forced" into taking medication; I went searching for it after years of struggling and failed therapy. It was only after starting medication that I could possibly begin to get back in control of my life.
I am absolutely certain that the techniques mentioned in this book can help cope with depression; cognitive-behavioral therapy is wonderful this way, and I have found it greatly useful _once I started medication_. But 'throw the medicine out the door; it's just being pushed on you by money-grubbing multinational corporations' is a frighteningly biased viewpoint that can be very dangerous (as in Fisher's "The Best Awful"), or even fatal
to people with very real, serious mood disorders, for which there is ample biochemical and genetic evidence that something deeper than behavior has gone wrong.
The choice to be on or to forgo medication is not one to make based on bias. It must be made by knowing what works for you. If taken entirely to heart, this book could save the lives of some people. What I am afraid of is the damage it could cause to others, who are not as strong and capable of controlling the chaos of bipolar disorder as the author is.
Rating:
Summary: Might have good ideas buried in it somewhere...
Review: I gave up halfway through, however. Most interestingly, it reads as if it was written during one of the periods of mania the author claims to have conquered! Blah blah blah, with spurious metaphorical connections--she seems to think she has something about quantum physics figured out (connects it in some glib way to brain function, if I remember correctly if vaguely) that is pretty durned amazing considering theoretical physicists haven't figured out how to link quantum effects that describe the subatomic world to the apparently Newtonian visible reality! She'd better call Hawking as soon as possible! Delusions of grandeur much? Nah, she's got that knocked. She is just ACTUALLY godlike, which is probably why she didn't need an editor as another reviewer also suspects. I am sympathetic to the idea that the extreme medicalization of mental health is problematic, as I am now trying to get off the meds-go-round that has made my life worse than when I started, but there are many titles (e.g. anything by Breggin, keeping in mind that he is an extremist) that focus on helping the reader through concrete steps, instead of expecting the reader to want to get to know the fascinating author in minute detail. Incredibly self-involved mishmash--the self-involvement being another feature of the mania and depression the author sussed out and eradicated in herself. Ahem.
Rating:
Summary: TAKE CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE TODAY
Review: I happened upon this book on depression at my local bookstore and since I have battled depression (bipolar & otherwise) for most of my 41 years, I bought it, tho' I'd pretty much taken a blood oath to never buy another book on depression again (otherwise my post-mortem library would consist of diet books and ones on depression, which would depress my heirs.) In this case, I'm glad I bought it, and am mighty uplifted by the possibility that I am not the hopeless victim of a disease beyond my control, doomed to taking antidepressants for the rest of my life. I've practiced a few of the suggestions for Directed Thought already & must say that at this early stage, they've worked wonderfully well, which is nothing short of a miracle. My personal history reads very similarly to the author's and even before I read this book, I had begun to travel down the same paths to self-responsibility, mostly because I'm a fundamentalist Christian, of a stripe that is very suspicious of psychiatry, anyway. In a nutshell, Ms. Curtiss calls on everyone, no matter what their past or chemical leanings, to take responsibility for their own actions & encourages them that with a few simple mental exercises, they can take control of their own thoughts. Though I was skeptical at first, I must say the exercises have worked for me, enough that I'm reducing my antidepressants (with my doctor's permission) and hoping against hope that I might discontinue them completely. I congratulate Ms. Curtiss for offering up her personal testimony (as we say in the South) and speaking her mind and swimming against the stream. Looking at the editorial reviews posted here, I have to comment that it's a strange world we live in, when writing a book to encourage people to take responsibility for their own actions comes under such fire. I personally didn't find her book rambling or poorly edited, but entertaining and occasionally hilarious, in the tell-all tradition of Annie Lamott. If you battle depression, I do encourage you to give this method a careful read. The selling price is about an eighth of the price of a professional psych visit & you might find something here to help you change your life.
Rating:
Summary: Dangerously Imbalanced
Review: My advice is to give this book a pass. Spend your money on one that provides a more balanced view. The only positive part of the book for me was the emphasis throughout that sufferers of depression should keep active and engaged in spite of their feelings. By keeping the `thinking brain' active with what the author calls "directed thinking" we can fight our tendency to focus on negative feelings. This is certainly sound advice. However, you can find essentially the same advice in any self help book on depression. To its detriment, the book delivers a mess of unorthodox opinion that the author chooses to present as fact. She states that depression is not an illness, just a normal part of the human condition. She claims that it is noble to suffer with depression. Suffering builds character and is necessary to get in touch with our true selves. She supports this view with numerous quotations from the "great thinkers" of history. She dismisses medication as bad claiming that anti-depressant drugs artificially blunt our true nature and stifle creativity. The author suffers from bipolar depression and indicates that her mood swings occur frequently. Mania may account for the general tone of the book which I found to be quite arrogant. For example, she writes: "It does not matter that the whole psychological community declares that manic depression (bipolar disorder) is a mental illness and is not a question of choice. The whole psychological community has a great unrecognized incapacity in this area. The whole psychological community is wrong." Her contention that depression is not an illness but stems from a weak will or a lack of mental discipline seems to be contradicted by her own experience. She gives many examples illustrating her own strong will and mental discipline yet she still rides the roller coaster of bipolar depression. Even the title of the book is somewhat misleading. At one point, she says that depression is not a choice - it is giving in to depression that is a choice. Of course that wouldn't have made such a snappy title. Her anti-drug stance is presented without objective evidence to support her position. Her reference to anti-depressant medication as "happy pills" to me reveals a dangerous misunderstanding of the subject. Perhaps her bias stems from a desire to avoid diminishing the "joy" of her manic highs. For that she is willing to suffer the misery of the low phases, a suffering that she has decided is virtuous. Maybe her opinion would change if she were constantly low. I do not recommend this book. Major depression is a state of serious ill health that has claimed many lives. Sufferers and their loved ones deserve better treatment advice than this book offers.
Rating:
Summary: This book saved my life
Review: Okay, so perhaps the author's style is a bit symptomatic of her manic approach to life. And perhaps I did get a little lost in her free-associative style. She definitely casts a wide net, and though I agree with much of her cultural commentary, it definitely could have been better-organized. All this said, Depression is a Choice offered me a lot of hope just when I was about to finally give in to anti-depressants. My entire family has been on them for years, everyone I know supports me going on them, and I was getting to the point where I thought that without them, I might not survive the holidays. Curtiss helped pull me through. I wish her anecdotes about her manic and depressive episodes were consolidated into more of a memoire, because they were by far the most entertaining and encouraging aspect of the book. I could relate all-too-well, and it was a revelation that my doomed real estate scheme, my doomed diet schemes, and all my other ill-fated schemes were ill-fated because they were manifestations of mania, and poorly-guided as decsions. If you're a manic-depressive on or considering medication, I highly recommend this book. It has its flaws, but they're overshadowed for me by how much I gained in wisdom.
Rating: 
Summary: Depression is a Choice: Winning the Battle Without Drugs
Review: Okay, so perhaps the author's style is a bit symptomatic of her manic approach to life. And perhaps I did get a little lost in her free-associative style. She definitely casts a wide net, and though I agree with much of her cultural commentary, it definitely could have been better-organized. All this said, Depression is a Choice offered me a lot of hope just when I was about to finally give in to anti-depressants. My entire family has been on them for years, everyone I know supports me going on them, and I was getting to the point where I thought that without them, I might not survive the holidays. Curtiss helped pull me through. I wish her anecdotes about her manic and depressive episodes were consolidated into more of a memoire, because they were by far the most entertaining and encouraging aspect of the book. I could relate all-too-well, and it was a revelation that my doomed real estate scheme, my doomed diet schemes, and all my other ill-fated schemes were ill-fated because they were manifestations of mania, and poorly-guided as decsions. If you're a manic-depressive on or considering medication, I highly recommend this book. It has its flaws, but they're overshadowed for me by how much I gained in wisdom.
Rating:
Summary: This book saved my life
Review: When I was in the throes of a moderately deep (for me) depression, this book showed me a path forward. I am enormously appreciative of the guidance, including many practical tips on matters such as overcoming insominia, that I obtained from Ms. Curtiss.
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