Healing Anxiety and Depression | Daniel G. Amen, Lisa C. Routh

Healing Anxiety and Depression | Daniel G. Amen, Lisa C. Routh | Fascinating, but exercise some healthy skepticism.

books:

Healing Anxiety an...

	Healing Anxiety and Depression Daniel G. Amen, Lisa C. Routh, 2004 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 39 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Astonishing

Dr. Amen is definitely one of the best when it comes to mental illness. Having suffered from depression, and more severely, anxiety, I browsed through the health section at my local bookstore looking for answers. And I definitely found them in this book. This book talks about the 7 types of depression and anxiety, how they are caused, what brain chemicals are causing the symptoms and where in the brain the problem lies. Dr. Amen uses SPECT nuclear imaging to see the brain in its depressed/anxious states. Along with descriptions of all of the 7 types are images of the brain with that type of depression/anxiety. I narrowed down my depression/anxiety to be a type 4, followed the advice it suggested, and have been 90% depression and anxiety free for 6 months. A MUST read for anyone suffering from a mood or anxiety disorder.

for more information click here

Fascinating, but exercise some healthy skepticism.

Amen's "new program" actually has less to do with the patient's protocol than the physician's basis for selecting it. The author maintains that his research in "imaging" various brain patterns and wave activity in selected portions of the brain enables him to determine the precise sort of depressive-anxiety disorder (the author identifies seven) being experienced by the patient. Upon making this determination, the prescribed therapies are along familiar lines--tricyclic medications, SSRI's, SNRI's, etc. The photos are interesting and possibly useful (though not necessarily proof of cause and effect), and the readerly prose insures that the reader will pick up a good deal of information about the structure of the brain. Also, the author provides a questionnaire to enable a reader to approximate what the brain images might have confirmed, thus enabling him to determine his type of depressive disorder(s), if any. From there, the practical information and applications are likely to be of value in proportion to the amount of information the reader already has about depression and anxiety.

The author covers psychotropic medications, cognitive approaches, exercise and other mainline therapies. He says very little about combinations of medications. And the book loses some of its credibility, in my opinion, in the discussion of alternative therapies that have been discredited elsewhere. There's no scientific evidence I'm aware of that would support the theory that supplements like GABA, l-Tyrosine, or l-Phenylananine alleviate anxiety-depression or even break through the blood membrane to become part of the body's own chemistry. Also, whether injections of testosterone and DHEA are sufficiently helpful to outweigh the risks makes questionable the author's apparent recommendation of them. Finally, some of the information already appears dated--for example, the assertion that Ambien is totally unrelated to the benzodiazapines and is non-addictive.

Still, the book is quite comprehensive, provides much accessible and potentially useful information and, provided the reader exercises some healthy skepticism, should make the subject less daunting and confusing.

for more information click here

knowledge is power!!!

Very intresting book,, it explains the MEDICAL stand point about depression which involves diffrent parts of the brain,,also explains that a diet higer in protein lower in sugar is very beneficial to people who suffer from chemical imbalance! I learned a lot reading this book, and recommend it to anybody suffering from medical depression, because its not your fault! And you don't have to suffer alone anymore!!

Don't buy this book from Amazon

After page 186, the book repeats pages 123 through 186. After the second page 186, the book jumps right to page 251. Page 187 through page page 250 are missing from the book. The information I was able to look through was really great. There must have been problems with the printing.

for more information click here

Too much nature not enough nurture

I think Amen goes a little to far claiming to heal depression and anxiety. Althrough depression and anxiety have physical manifistations and treatments I think it is important to address the psycholgical cuases and issues that contribute to these problems.

reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

products you might be interested in