To see the book on Amazon:

Recovering from depression can be quick (4 to 12 weeks), with or without medication.
 

You can start getting regular emotional support today, online, for free or almost free.
 

Effective talk therapy can be surprisingly inexpensive if you know where to look.
 

This is a plain-language guidebook for people who have become depressed to the point that they don't function as well.  This is for you whether you can still work – or if you have hit a wall.  
 

More than 90 illustrations make the book easy to read, even if your concentration is not great right now.
 

Antidepressants, if you want them, can be a powerful tool for you to get better.  One medication can improve your depression within 3 to 7 days, if your depression is very severe.
 

You can cut down the intensity of problems of alcohol, drugs, gambling, and panic attacks. The book gives you nuts-and-bolts steps.  Also, there are now medications that help with all of these issues.
 

Getting "sick leave" (salary insurance) may be simpler than you thought.  This book shows how to get it and how to keep it as long as you need it.   Is it your job that is making you so depressed?  Some advice for that.
 

Can "magic mushrooms", ketamine, or herbal remedies help you?
 

The book gives valuable depression-measuring sheets (12 copies) that can help your health-care provider adjust your treatment.  You can tear out the sheets from the book, one by one.
 

CONTENTS:

• How to get better from depression – with or      without medication.
• A first-aid pill that can work in 3 to 7 days if      your depression is intense.
• What depression is like (with many pictures).
• Depression tear-out sheets measuring your      depression, to bring to your mental health care provider (12 copies).
• Talk Therapy, Part 1: Support groups and services      online, for free or almost free.
• Talk Therapy, Part 2: Therapy that gets you      better.
• Antidepressant medication. If it's given, stick      with it – these meds take 2-3 weeks to start working. There's a tear-out      chapter to show to your doctor about the new quick-relief medication.
• New medications to help you stay off alcohol and      drugs.
• Free online support groups for alcohol, drug, and      gambling problems.
• How to get disability payments (sick leave).
• Old-age depression.
• Depression lasting for years.
• Roller-coaster "black hole" (bipolar)      depression.
• Glad in summer, sad in winter (S.A.D. or Seasonal      Affective Disorder).  Do-it-yourself bright light therapy equipment      for $36.
• Depression with strange mental experiences –      disturbing thoughts, confusion, hearing voices, feeling very unsafe.
• Depression around the time of giving birth      (post-partum or "perinatal").
• Steps to get better - get moving!
• Make a list of your problems.
• Money problems – tips for controlling expenses      for housing, car and food.
• Relationship problems. 
• Alcohol problems.
• Drug problems.
• Gambling problems, including medication      treatment.
• Panic Attacks.
• Suicide.
• Therapy – 2 to 3 months - what      Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy is like.
• Effective therapy for "borderlines,"      people who have trouble controlling their moment-to-moment emotions.
• Therapy for lifelong depression.
• "Natural" or "herbal"      antidepressants.
• Ketamine and Magic Mushrooms (psilocybin).

Brain treatments, including "shock therapy."  Are they OK? 

About the author: Dr. James Farquhar is a psychiatrist who has practiced in the McGill University hospital network in Montreal for almost 40 years.   He is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Toronto (MD).  He received the Diploma in Psychiatry from McGill in 1986.  Along the way, he worked as a journalist for two years.

  Health care professionals:

You can give better care to depressed clients, in less time, by recommending this very readable, and inexpensive,   book to them.

There are more than 90 illustrations that make the  main points easier to understand.

The book contains essential information to explain various treatment approaches, with and without medication.

If medication is chosen as part of the treatment plan, the book explains (with a memorable illustration) why the client should keep taking it for the 2 or 3 weeks before it starts to give an effect.

The book emphasizes crisis intervention, something that is sometimes partly overlooked for lack of time. The client is given many tips and suggestions on how they can take steps to solve the problems that are making them depressed -- or keeping them depressed.

 For problems of money, alcohol, drugs, gambling, and panic attacks, the book explains the most powerful current approaches with and without medication. Work problems and sick leave (salary insurance) are covered in detail.

Clients usually want and need supportive therapy and interventions. Professionals sometimes don't have enough time to give this optimally. 

The book tells of free, or almost free, online sources of emotional support of good quality, available immediately or rapidly.

 Two questionnaires in the book, the PHQ-9 and a zero-to-10 emoji scale, give numerical scores that help track the intensity of their depression for your clinical notes. There are 12 copies of the scales, detachable from the book one at a time. 

This book allows you to give better help because the client will be better informed and, we may hope, more adherent to a treatment plan.

About the author: Dr. James Farquhar is a psychiatrist who has practiced in the McGill University hospital network in Montreal for almost 40 years.   He is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Toronto (MD).  He received the Diploma in Psychiatry from McGill in 1986.  Along the way, he worked as a journalist for two years.

La version française du livre est disponible sur Amazon. Elle est surtout conçue pour le Canada.