Consider this statistic: In the United States, 5.3% of the total population will at any given point in time have depression, and the lifetime risk is 7-8% in adults, higher for women. About 40 years ago, the average age for onset depression was 29.5%; today it has halved to 14.5 years. Although the rates differ around the world, the incidence of depressive illness has risen dramatically since 1990.
Against this backdrop, many scholars have attempted to write and establish various methods of treatment such as cognitive therapies to explain why anxiety and depression happens. Some of these anxiety self-help books on amazon provide life-changing insights into how our thoughts and emotions interact.
1. Overcoming Anxiety: A Self-Help Guide Using Cognitive Behavioral Techniques by Helen Kennerley
This book is on national books for prescription. An updated edition of the best-selling anxiety book provides self-help program, written by Helen Kennerley. Helen is a UK based consultant psychologist with Oxford Cognitive Therapy Centre, specializing in anxiety, childhood trauma and eating disorders
Overcoming Anxiety outlines a range of anxieties and fears including panic attacks, phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and generalized anxiety. The author covers the nature of anxiety and stress and accordingly provides an extensive self-help program with monitoring sheets in line with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
The readers of the book claim that the book presents a helpful plan for managing anxiety. What do the users of the book say:
- It outlines affordable and simple steps that can be followed by anyone going through anxiety and depression;
- Assists in identifying the unhelpful cycles and thought patterns going on in my head. It’s not an overnight fix although, the book gives critical insight into the reasons that causes anxieties and provides techniques to overcome;
- The technique, if followed by the users boosts confidence. The book reader claimed that after reading this book one of her friends was visible getting more confident, to the point where she was able to stand in front of people and speak during their group presentation.
2. I’m OK – You’re OK by Thomas A. Harris
I’m OK – You’re OK was featured as one of the pop psychology booms of the 1960’s and 1970’s as the demand for the book was tremendous changing lives of millions, selling over 10 million copies.
The author Thomas A. Harris used Eric Berne’s work on Transaction Analysis as a basis for his own. The book focuses on the three internal voices that speak to us all the time in the form of archetypal characters: the Parent, the Adult, an the Child.
What does it take to be “OK”?
Harris observed that children, by virtue of their inferior power in an adult world, learn that “I’m not OK, whereas you, being an adult, are OK.”. Every child learns this even if they have a happy childhood, and many adults only overturn this basic decision after their parents pass on. Yet the important thing is that if we try, we can change that position. The book attempts to explain how we can understand other people’s behaviour better before making a judgement.
I’m OK – You’re OK provides a key for letting us out of a mental prison that we may not even have known we inhabit.
3. Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns
“If you’re willing to invest a little time in yourself, you can learn to master your moods more effectively, just as an athlete who participates in a daily conditioning program can develop a greater endurance and strength”
This anxiety self-help book outlines the key criteria to release yourself from your emotional prison. The answer is articulated as:
“Your thoughts create your emotions; therefore, your emotions cannot prove that your thoughts are accurate. Unpleasant feeling merely indicate that you are thinking something negative and believing it. Burns concludes that our emotions follow our thought patterns as naively as baby ducks follow their mother.
In his work at the University of the Pennsylvania as psychiatric Burns worked with pioneering cognitive psychologist Aaron T. Beck who believed that depression and anxiety was simply a result of illogical and negative thinking. And by consciously correcting once twisted thoughts, one could get back to normal.
When the author tried this new treatment for depression named cognitive therapy, he was amazed at how many of his chronic patients were relieved of their destructive feelings. He claimed that people who had been suicidal a couple of weeks earlier now looked forward to rebuilding their lives.
Prescribing books like Feeling Good to people who are suffering from mental health issues is called “bibliotherapy” and Burns is ranked highly by professionals.
4. Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfilment by Martin Seligman
Martin Seligman noted that the science of psychology has always focussed on what is wrong with people and rarely gives attention to finding out what makes people happy or fulfilled. His work on feelings and helplessness and pessimism led him to research optimism and positive emotion, and how their presence could be increased in people’s lives.
Through this book, the author attempts to teach us about leading good and meaningful life. Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfilment collates hundreds of research findings and makes various interesting points about some of the factors that conventionally thought to bring happiness. A few of them encompass the following:
Money:
A study concluded that people’s happiness does not increase on par with extra wealth. Seligman notes that materialistic people are not happy.
Marriage:
In a survey of about 35,000 Americans over a period of 30 years, the National Opinion Research Center found that 40 percent of married people are were very happy. He found that nearly all very happy people are in a romantic relationship.
Sociability:
People who spend a lot of time alone particularly report a much lower level of happiness.
Religion:
People with strong religious beliefs are consistently shown to be happier and satisfied with life than nonreligious. These people have lower rates of depression and are more resilient to setbacks and tragedy.
Seligman argues that genuine happiness arise through the slow development of your character and not simply the factors stipulated above. Character includes wisdom, knowledge, courage love, humanity and spirituality among other things.
This amazing book goes on to discuss the importance of developing strengths and whether our part determines our future happiness. After reading this book you understand the importance of gratitude and that the path to happiness is not mystical and can only be enjoyed by other people – the paths to it are clearer than ever.
5. A Guide to Rational Living by Albert Ellis
“If we know how we generate negative emotions through particular thoughts, especially irrational ones, we have the secret to never being desperately unhappy again”
A Guide to Rational Living is categorized as one of the most enduring books in popular psychology literature, selling over a million copies. The author brought to public attention a new form of psychology – rational emotive therapy (RET), which implies that emotion does not arise as a result of repressed desires and needs but directly originates from our thoughts, ideas, attitudes, and beliefs.
This book helps anyone to understand how their emotions are generated and more importantly how a reasonably happy and productive life can be yours through discipline. The book touches on topics such as lessening the need for approval, conquering anxiety, how to be happy though frustrated, and eradicating the fear of failure.
Conclusion
Could reading a book be as effective, or even better than drugs or psychotherapy in helping people with anxiety and depression? It is definitely worth trying. As one of the well-respected professionals in this field points out in Feeling Good, revised edition that his books cost about the price of two Prozac pills, and the upside is that there are no side effects.