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This Close to Happy : A Reckoning with Depression by Daphne Merkin (2017, Hardcover)
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About this product
Product Identifiers
PublisherFarrar, Straus & Giroux
ISBN-100374140367
ISBN-139780374140366
eBay Product ID (ePID)222173923
Product Key Features
Book TitleThis Close to Happy : a Reckoning with Depression
Number of Pages256 Pages
LanguageEnglish
TopicWomen, Mood Disorders / Depression, Women's Health, Personal Memoirs, Pregnancy & Childbirth
Publication Year2017
IllustratorYes
GenreHealth & Fitness, Self-Help, Biography & Autobiography
AuthorDaphne Merkin
FormatHardcover
Dimensions
Item Height1.1 in
Item Weight15.2 Oz
Item Length8.5 in
Item Width6.1 in
Additional Product Features
Intended AudienceTrade
LCCN2016-025616
Reviews"D. W. Winnicott wrote that depression is the fog over the battlefield. In this extraordinarily lucid and moving book, Daphne Merkin illuminates the dark and desperate battle that depression can be. This is a book for all those who know nothing about depression and for those who know too much." --Adam Phillips " This Close to Happy belongs on the shelf with William Styron's Darkness, Visible and Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon . It brings a stunningly perceptive voice to the forefront of the conversation about depression, one that is both reassuring and revelatory." --Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different Voice " This Close to Happy is honest, fearless in the way we have come to expect from Daphne Merkin, and, as a bonus, frankly informative. From Merkin we get the inside view of navigating a chronic psychiatric illness to a realistic outcome. As she writes, 'the opposite of depression is not a state of unimaginable happiness, but a state of relative all-right-ness.' For some, that insight alone will speak volumes. Her candor discussing the fears, tribulations, and triumphs of a lifetime of treatment will be valuable for anyone who loves someone with depression but makes necessary reading for the mental health professionals on the other side of the couch." --Harold S. Koplewicz, M.D., President, Child Mind Institute, "D. W. Winnicott wrote that depression is the fog over the battlefield. In this extraordinarily lucid and moving book, Daphne Merkin illuminates the dark and desperate battle that depression can be. This is a book for all those who know nothing about depression and for those who know too much." -Adam Phillips " This Close to Happy belongs on the shelf with William Styron's Darkness, Visible and Andrew Solomon's The Nobody Demon . It brings a stunningly perceptive voice into the forefront of the conversation about depression, one that is both reassuring and revelatory." -Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different Voice " This Close to Happy is honest, fearless in the way we have come to expect from Daphne Merkin, and, as a bonus, frankly informative. FromMerkin we get the inside view of navigating a chronic psychiatric illness to a realistic outcome. As she writes, 'the opposite of depression is not a state of unimaginable happiness, but a state of relative all-right-ness.' For some, that insight alone will speak volumes. Her candor discussing the fears, tribulations and triumphs of a lifetime of treatment will be valuable for anyone who loves someone with depression but makes necessary reading for the mental health professionals on the other side of the couch." -Harold S Koplewicz, M.D., President, Child Mind Institute, " This Close to Happy is honest, fearless in the way we have come to expect from Daphne Merkin, and, as a bonus, frankly informative. FromMerkin we get the inside view of navigating a chronic psychiatric illness to a realistic outcome. As she writes, 'the opposite of depression is not a state of unimaginable happiness, but a state of relative all-right-ness.' For some, that insight alone will speak volumes. Her candor discussing the fears, tribulations and triumphs of a lifetime of treatment will be valuable for anyone who loves someone with depression but makes necessary reading for the mental health professionals on the other side of the couch." -Harold S Koplewicz, M.D., President, Child Mind Institute
Dewey Edition23
Dewey Decimal616.85/270092 B
SynopsisThis Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime. Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine , Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction. She recounts the travails of growing up in a large, affluent family where there was a paucity of love and of basics such as food and clothing despite the presence of a chauffeur and a cook. She goes on to recount her early hospitalization for depression in poignant detail, as well as her complex relationship with her mercurial, withholding mother.Along the way Merkin also discusses her early, redemptive love of reading and gradual emergence as a writer. She eventually marries, has a child, and suffers severe postpartum depression, for which she is again hospitalized. Merkin also discusses her visits to various therapists and psychopharmocologists, which enables her to probe the causes of depression and its various treatments. The book ends in the present, where the writer has learned how to navigate her depression, if not "cure" it, after a third hospitalization in the wake of her mother's death., A New York Times Book Review Favorite Read of 2016 "Despair is always described as dull," writes Daphne Merkin, "when the truth is that despair has a light all its own, a lunar glow, the color of mottled silver." This Close to Happy --Merkin's rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression--captures this strange light. Daphne Merkin has been hospitalized three times: first, in grade school, for childhood depression; years later, after her daughter was born, for severe postpartum depression; and later still, after her mother died, for obsessive suicidal thinking. Recounting this series of hospitalizations, as well as her visits to myriad therapists and psychopharmacologists, Merkin fearlessly offers what the child psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz calls "the inside view of navigating a chronic psychiatric illness to a realistic outcome." The arc of Merkin's affliction is lifelong, beginning in a childhood largely bereft of love and stretching into the present, where Merkin lives a high-functioning life and her depression is manageable, if not "cured." "The opposite of depression," she writes with characteristic insight, "is not a state of unimaginable happiness . . . but a state of relative all-right-ness." In this dark yet vital memoir, Merkin describes not only the harrowing sorrow that she has known all her life, but also her early, redemptive love of reading and gradual emergence as a writer. Written with an acute understanding of the ways in which her condition has evolved as well as affected those around her, This Close to Happy is an utterly candid coming-to-terms with an illness that many share but few talk about, one that remains shrouded in stigma. In the words of the distinguished psychologist Carol Gilligan, "It brings a stunningly perceptive voice into the forefront of the conversation about depression, one that is both reassuring and revelatory."
LC Classification NumberRG852.M47 2017
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- Apr 13, 2017
This close to happy
Verified purchase: YesCondition: New
