Title: Beyond Blue Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes
Author: Therese Borchard
Publisher: Center Street
Publication Date: January 6, 2010
Hardcover: 288 pages
ISBN: 9781599951560
Genre: Memoir/Self-Help/Depression
Therese Borchard may be one of the frankest, funniest people on the planet. That, combined with her keen writing abilities has made her Beliefnet blog, Beyond Blue, one of the most trafficked blogs on the site.
BEYOND BLUE, the book, is part memoir/part self-help. It describes Borchard’s experience of living with manic depression as well as providing cutting-edge research and information on dealing with mood disorders. By exposing her vulnerability, she endears herself immediately to the reader and then reduces even the most depressed to laughter as she provides a companion on the journey to recovery and the knowledge that the reader is not alone.
Comprised of four sections and twenty-one chapters, BEYOND BLUE covers a wide range of topics from codependency to addiction, poor body image to postpartum depression, from alternative medicine to psychopharmacology, managing anxiety to applying lessons from therapy. Because of her laser wit and Erma Bombeck sense of humor, every chapter is entertaining as well as serious.
My Review:
In Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes, Therese Borchard shares her numerous struggles with her readers in hopes that no one should feel as though they are the only one suffering and Borchard wants anyone struggling to know they are not alone. While tackling tough and painful memories, Borchard shares with her readers in an often-witty manner numerous topics. These topics include depression, anorexia, alcoholism, manic-depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, perfectionism, and suicidal thoughts. She speaks of therapy sessions, good and bad, her experiences with mental wards, the stigmas all too often attached to mental illnesses and tools to make it through. Borchard, through her own personal struggles, sheds light on the many forms of mental illness, her experiences with various treatments, her daily struggles, as well as wonderful and insightful quotes from others and doctors in each respective field. I found Beyond Blue to be an extremely touching and poignant memoir. I was apprehensive at first, feeling the book would be painful to read and bring up memories I would prefer not to dwell upon. Never judge a book by it’s cover or title. Borchard’s style of writing is somber and witty while tackling very personal issues, putting the reading at ease. Whether or not someone is depressed, anxious or suffering from a mental illness or not, I believe this book will be a breathe of fresh air to those looking for a ray of hope and illumination to those who know of someone struggling with a mental illness.
About the Author:
Therese Borchard is the author of the hit daily blog “Beyond Blue” on Beliefnet.com, which is featured weekly on The Huffington Post and was voted by PsychCentral.com as one of the top 10 depression blogs, and she moderates the popular depression support group, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet’s social networking site. Therese is the editor of The Imperfect Mom: Candid Confessions of Mothers Living in the Real World, featured in Real Simple, Parenting, More, Working Mother, Psychology Today, Fit Pregnancy, the Chicago Tribune, and on Salon.com, and of I Love Being a Mom: Treasured Stories, Memories, and Milestones, a Target selection, and featured in Redbook, Parenting, BabyTalk, the Chicago Tribune, and the Detroit Free Press. With Michael Leach, she is co-editor of A Celebration of a Married Life and the national bestseller I Like Being Catholic. Her newest book, The Pocket Therapist, will be published by Hachette Book Group in April of 2010.
Therese has published articles in the Washington Post, Ladies’ Home Journal, Parenting, Guideposts, Publishers Weekly, the Baltimore Sun, and on PsychCentral.com, The Huffington Post, and Yahoo! She is becoming a go-to expert in the field of pop-psychology, recently quoted in The Wall Street Journal, O, and on CNN.com and Time.com. Her nationally syndicated column, “Our Turn,” is distributed biweekly by Catholic News Service. She appears monthly on Sirius Satellite Radio, is featured regularly on radio programs throughout the country, and has been a repeated guest on national television programs, such as “Fox and Friends” (Fox News Channel) and “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher” (ABC). She lives with her husband, Eric, and their two “spirited” children in Annapolis, Maryland.
Visit ThereseBorchard.com
And check out Therese Borchard’s daily blog on Beliefnet.com and the HuffingtonPost.com
Follow @ThereseBorchard on Twitter.
I received a free copy of Beyond Blue by Therese Borchard from Hachette as part of the tour. Receiving a free copy in no way reflected my review of aforementioned novel.
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