Psychiatrists & Psychologists - Biography, Depression & Mood Disorders, Mental/Psychological Disorder Patients - Biography
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Overview
Depression transformed Martha Manning from a happy, healthy, and successful wife, mother, professor, and psychotherapist who "lived with the innocent arrogance that [her] life was the simple product of [her] effort, will, and design" to a sleepwalker haunted by thoughts of suicide, "a house of cards, held precariously by the fragile conspiracy of wind, weight, and angle." Undercurrents chronicles this transformation through Manning's startlingly funny, deeply affecting, and always honest journal entries. Outlining the depths and dimensions of severe clinical depression, Manning's quick wit and razor-sharp powers of observation allow us to laugh at and empathize with the mounting disarray in her life: insurmountable household clutter, nightly insomnia, manic, caffeine-fueled efforts to meet deadlines. We understand her terror as she evaluates a new patient only to realize that she herself meets all of the textbook criteria of depression, and feel her nowhere-to-turn despair as she is forced to acknowledge that the love of her family, the support of her therapist, and the exhaustive drug treatments administered by her psychiatrist are not succeeding in stemming the tide of her disease. Finally, Manning agrees to electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT. Notorious for its past abuses, its safety and efficacy open to debate, this controversial treatment becomes her last resort and only hope.Editorials
Dallas Morning News
Full of unexpected delights...honest, hilarious, full of hope.Los Angeles Times
A brilliant combination of wit, irony, and despair....Undercurrents is absolutely as good as it gets.New York Times Book Review
A convincing testament to the inexorable cruelty of depression and a frightening reminder of its unprejudiced choice of victims.Philadelphia Inquirer
Humor, candor, and a respect for the power of image and metaphor to heal.USA Today
An absolutely absorbing read.Washington Post
A moving and engaging journal....I found myself laughing out loud.Whitney Scott
This powerfully gripping account of a therapist's reckoning with her own severe depression is a breathtaking gem of a book, heartrending, hilarious, extraordinarily human. Written in diary form, it takes us through Manning's deepening downward spiral of despondency to despair as she loses interest, appetite, the ability to sleep, and the will to live and winds up in fetal position on her therapist's couch. No combination of antidepressants and tranquilizers releases her from the excruciating torture, the nameless, faceless dread she endures and articulates: "The emptiness of depression. . . . Every inch of me aches. I can't believe a person can hurt this bad and still breathe. All escapes are illusory--distractions, sleep, drugs, doctors, answers, hope." The mention of shock therapy may bring to some memories of Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar" and of Thomas Eagleton's political demise, but it is only a series of electroconvulsive therapy treatments administered over time in an inpatient setting that literally brings Manning back from the edge of death. In writing of her ordeal, she manages an antic, graveyard humor, peppered with stunningly perceptive observations, which inspires faith in the healing powers of humor just as her extraordinary book inspires hope for the human spirit.From Barnes & Noble
The compelling journal of a psychotherapist chronicles her struggle with life-threatening depression & her hopes for recovery through a controversial treatment: electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT.Book Details
Published
June 19, 1995
Publisher
HarperSanFrancisco
Pages
224
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780062511836