This Close to Happy: A Reckoning with Depression
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.91 (526 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1250159296 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 304 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2013-02-26 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Her writing frequently appears in The New York Times, Bookforum, Departures, Travel + Leisure, W, Vogue, Tablet Magazine, and other publications. Merkin has taught writing at the 92nd Street Y, Marymount College, and Hunter College. She lives in New York City. . Her previous books include Enc
Rose said Insightful, helpful firsthand account of depression. I read this while severely depressed and found it helpful. This isn't the point of the book—it's a beautifully-written, insightful, firsthand account of someone's lifelong struggle with depression—but as I imagine a large number of people who pick up this book will, like me, be looking for some insight into their own situation, I'll say that I, for one, found some. I, like Daphne, sometimes struggle to accept depression as an illness as opposed to a personal failing, even as I live it, and reading. readernyc said A very good book with several flaws.. I quite loved Merkin's literary asides, I am a reader as well. This book definely brought me into depression, a mood disorder I don't happen to have but the writing here is somehow contagious. I didn't mind that terrible feeling as it lifted when I finished the book. Merkin's strength here is showing in blazingly purposeful detail: The parents, the other kids, and her childhood. If one image stands out for me it is of her Jewish mother drawing Nazi imagery on her arms. I mean, these parents should have been f. Depression Unmasked Susan M. Baumann Brilliant, scathing, heartbreaking and raw. This is the most powerfully honest book on depression and child abuse that I have ever read. Merkin's bereft childhood of brutality and lack seems to be the fertile ground that created her despondency and the tenacious, pervasive longing for suicide. Her parents appear blatantly psychologically disordered, meting out damage as casually as one would order lunch. Merkin is by turns, attached to, and repelled by, a vicious mother, who seems both stunningly narcissistic
Please read as soon as possible.” Gloria Vanderbilt“This beautifully written tale of Daphne Merkin’s depressive demons is by far the most accurate and human account of depression and its impact that I have ever read. I highly recommend it, both to those in the mental health professions and to those who care about the suffering of their loved ones.” Glen O. Merkin for resisting this desire to die long enough to give us what is one of the most accurate, and therefore most harrowing, accounts of depression to be written in the last century Ms. It brings a stunningl
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 gifted and audacious writer confronts her lifelong battle with depression and her search for releaseThis 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 eventually marries, has a child, and suffers severe postpart