SURVIVE YOU CAN, HOW?

How You Can Survive When They're Depressed

 Each year more than 17 million Americans and other people suffer from a depressive illness, yet few suffer in solitude. How You Can Survive When They're Depressed explores depression from the perspective of those who are closest to the sufferers of this prevalent disorder--spouses, parents, children, and lovers--and gives the successful coping strategies of many people who live with a clinical depressive or manic-depressive and often suffer in silence, believing their own problems have no claim to attention.

Depression fallout is the emotional toll on the depressive's family and close friends who are unaware of their own stressful reactions and needs. Sheffield outlines the five stages of depression fallout: confusion, self-doubt, demoralization, anger, and finally, the desire to escape.

 Many people will find relief in the knowledge that their self-blame, guilt, sadness, and resentment are a natural result of living with a depressed person.

Sheffield brings together many real-life examples from the pioneering support group she attends at Beth Israel Medical Center of how people with depression fallout have learned to cope.

 From setting boundaries to maintaining an outside social life, she gives practical tactics for handling the challenges and emotional stresses on a day-to-day basis. So I decided to share the review of this book along with the other reviewers that are subsequent.

1. Jodi.

This is a good read for anyone whose loved one is suffering from depression in any form. At the very least it will bring some clarity to why the depressed person is treating you the way they are and that even if you are empathetic and compassionate they may not be able to acknowledge or reciprocate those feelings.

Mental illness is complex and if you ask 10 people their opinion you are likely to get 10 different answers. 

Sheffield does a nice job of capturing some different examples and extremes and how families of those depressed go through their own series of stages dealing with the illness.

Support for the depressed is crucial, but the friends, family, and children must also seek out their own network of support and resources so they can be there to aid in the battle against this complex problem  

2. Scotty

Very helpful book and I have recommended it to friends who have someone living with them and having depression. Informative and the 5 stages that one goes through while not having the depression yet feeling you do. Helpful and a useful tool.

3. Elmo

After living with a depressed partner for 3 years, I was at my wits' end about the lethargy, the crying, the emotional distancing. I bought about 10 books on living with a depressed loved one, and not only did I think that Anne Sheffield's book was the most helpful, but my partner also read it and he said that it was the most accurate description of what he saw me going through.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a depressed loved one in their life.

4.L.Kemp

I've learned so much about depression from this book. Coping strategies, what medications are available and how they work, and their side effects, and most importantly that I'm not alone in this

 This book has given me tremendous insight. In these pages, I discovered that my husband did not have unipolar depression, as we thought, but atypical depression, which is treated differently. 

and very easy to read, as opposed to many other books on the subject, some of which were so technical that they put me to sleep. Thank you, Anne Sheffield, for truly making a difference in my marriage.

the above circumstances and people's experiences in this book pushed me to read it and share it with the community and globally in order to help them with such little effort.  

About the Author

Anne Sheffield is the daughter of a depressive. She has worked as a scientist at the Population and Development Program of the Battelle Memorial Institute and has run her own consulting firm. For more information on depression fallout, visit the author's Web site: depressionfallout.com.