The Power of Mindfulness

BY STUART EISENDRATH, MD

When Antidepressants Aren’t Enough

Over 50,000,000 Americans take psychotropic medications that are mostly antidepressants. Only half achieve lasting results. After a decade of research, Dr. Stuart Eisendrath and his team have found a treatment that helps people change their relationship with their thoughts and feelings. If you or someone you know suffers from clinical depression, reading this book can help.

BY STUART EISENDRATH, MD

When Antidepressants Aren’t Enough

Over 50,000,000 Americans take psychotropic medications that are mostly antidepressants. Only half achieve lasting results. After a decade of research, Dr. Stuart Eisendrath and his team have found a treatment that helps people change their relationship with their thoughts and feelings. If you or someone you know suffers from clinical depression, reading this book can help.

A Unique Approach to Treating Anxiety and Depression Backed by Research

This book is unique because it is written by a psychiatrist experienced in prescribing antidepressants and cognizant of their limitations. Dr. Eisendrath’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and has been focused on clinical outcomes of depression treatments and the effects of such treatments on brain recovery. He was one of the early adopters of MBCT and rapidly began developing it as a modality for individuals currently in episodes of depression.

There is Help for Clinical Depression and Anxiety

If you have been suffering from clinical depression, this book can help. Over 100,000,000 people suffer from this debilitating illness worldwide. Many suffer from concurrent anxiety along with their depression. For some, antidepressants work well, but for many others they return less than satisfactory results. If you are someone who needs an alternative, there is help.

Depression and Anxiety Can Recur

Few people experience depression only once. Using Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), you can change your relationship to your thoughts and feelings, particularly the depressive ones. This helps treat current depression and helps prevent relapse. Dr. Eisendrath walks you through the process step by step with exercises and examples. In as little as 8 weeks, When Antidepressants Aren’t Enough will lead you through the steps that fundamentally change your relationship to depressive thoughts and feelings—quickly, safely, and easily.

Years of Research and Experience

Dr. Eisendrath understands the limitations of antidepressants from years of experience and clinical research. In addition, his personal experience with depression makes him highly empathetic to those who suffer from this illness. Based on the award winning Practicing Alternatives to Heal Depression Study, When Antidepressants Aren’t Enough provides an appealing, feasible, and rapidly effective approach. It gives you the skills that you can employ to gain a sense of empowerment in coping with an illness that typically strips away your sense of control.

Available in Bookstores Locally or Online

If you’ve been on antidepressants and have failed to achieve full recovery or if you are not currently in treatment, the information in this book is important. When Antidepressants Aren’t Enough is available at amazon.com, bn.com and indiebound.org and your local bookstore.

Praise for When Antidepressants Aren’t Enough

“Stuart Eisendrath was the first to bring mindfulness to people with treatment-resistant depression and show that it can be of major benefit. The key point is that through regular practice, you can transform your relationship with your thoughts and emotions and with unwanted and painful experiences rather than forcing them to go away, which they will not. This realization, when enacted, is life-changing in little ways that aren’t so little. Indeed, it can be profoundly liberating.”

— Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD, founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and author of Falling Awake and The Healing Power of Mindfulness

“This authoritative guide from a world-class expert is warm, supportive, and chock-full of practical help. With many simple exercises and lots of down-to-earth suggestions, it’s also grounded in cutting-edge brain science. If you struggle with depression or know someone who does, this is a phenomenal resource.”

— Rick Hanson, PhD, author of Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence

“Our mind can be our best friend or our worst enemy. In this deeply humane and compassionate book based on his lifelong professional experience, Stuart Eisendrath distills the most insightful ways to approach depression, regain freedom from the fetters of our own mind, and learn to appreciate every moment of life. This book is a precious tool for all those who struggle to achieve a healthy mind.”

— Matthieu Ricard, author of Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World

“This book is a gift to people with depression who are looking for ways to ease their pain. By combining the wisdom of mindfulness and self-compassion practice with more standard therapeutic approaches, this book offers an empirically supported pathway out of depression that works and that has the power to change your life.”

— Kristin Neff, PhD, author of Self-Compassion and associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas, Austin

“Living well with depression may sound like an oxymoron, but it is the heart and soul of Professor Stuart Eisendrath’s new book, When Antidepressants Aren’t Enough. With encouragement and compassion, Dr. Eisendrath guides the reader through the process of developing a mindfulness practice that shapes and nurtures a new relationship with the thoughts that fuel depression — a relationship filled with self-acceptance, self-compassion, and peaceful coexistence with our minds.”

— Michael A. Tompkins, PhD, ABPP, codirector of the San Francisco Bay Area Center for Cognitive Therapy, assistant clinical professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Anxiety and Avoidance: A Universal Treatment for Anxiety, Panic, and Fear

“This inspiring book makes the best case yet for mindfulness as a treatment of depression. With wisdom and compassion, Dr. Eisendrath shows the reader precisely how nonjudgmental awareness goes to the roots of depression and transforms it for the better. The author has dedicated his career to researching and treating depression. His message is realistic and crystal clear, offering new hope to anyone who suffers from this all-too-common condition.”

— Christopher Germer, PhD, lecturer on psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, author of The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion, and codeveloper of mindful self-compassion (MSC)

“Based on pioneering neuroscience and solid clinical research, Stuart Eisendrath’s When Antidepressants Aren’t Enough provides a wealth of practical exercises that help shift our relationship to our thoughts. They can bring about changes in the experience of depression that are immediate and long-lasting. This is a significant contribution to the wise understanding of treatment and recovery from seemingly intractable depression. A gift.”

— Linda Graham, MFT, author of Bouncing Back and Resilience

“This title of this book is very apt. As a faculty member at the UCSF Depression Center, I have seen patients in my clinical and teaching practices respond beautifully to Dr. Eisendrath’s mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression, even those who did not respond to or could not tolerate antidepressant medication. I have become a staunch believer, and I am so glad that this book will bring Dr. Eisendrath’s techniques and approaches to a much larger audience of clinicians and patients alike.”

— Owen Wolkowitz, MD, professor of psychiatry and codirector of the UCSF Depression Center, University of California, San Francisco

“When Antidepressants Aren’t Enough is a must read for anyone with mood or anxiety issues — and their loved ones too. Dr Eisendrath will teach you how to change your relationship to depression and lift yourself out of negative or anxious moods.”

— Louann Brizendine, MD, neuropsychiatrist and author of The Female Brain and The Male Brain

What’s in This Book

Part 1

The Power of Now

In Part 1, Dr. Eisendrath lays the groundwork for your understanding and expectations. He shows you what mindfulness is and is not. Then he goes on to discuss how mindfulness helps with anxiety and depression by shifting your focus to the present moment and away from ruminations about the past or catastrophizing about the future.

Part 2

Changing Your Relationship to Your Mind and Thoughts

In Part 2, you’ll explore the mind and discover why your mind is not always your “friend.” Then you’ll go on to understand how thoughts are not equal to facts and begin to understand your “observing self.”

Part 3

Stumbling Blocks to Change and How to Overcome Them

Part 3 covers anxiety, depression’s frequent partner. After, you’ll explore anger and it’s impact on depression. Having an understanding of these 2 important factors is important to helping achieve lasting results.

Part 4

Lasting Ways to Achieve Happiness

In this final Part, Dr. Eisendrath discusses compassion and self-compassion are antidotes to anger and how they can buffer depression; how achievements and expectations relate to your happiness; the difference between pain and suffering; acceptance and other attitude shifts; and how to live well and keep your practice alive.

Studies show that mindfulness practices can…

Decrease Depression

Reduce Anxiety

Normalize Brain Function

Elevate Mood

Regulate Emotions

Enhance Decision Making

Lessen Stress

Increase Quality of Life

Founding Director of the University of California San Francisco Depression Center

Stuart J. Eisendrath, MD

Stuart Eisendrath, MD is a Professor of Clinical Psychiatry Emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco. He has treated a full range of depressive disorders from mild to the most severe over the past 40 years using multiple modalities. Dr. Eisendrath’s lectures on Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for the the University of California TV (www.uc.tv) have been viewed over 1.5 million times. He was one of the early adopters of MBCT and rapidly began developing it as a modality for individuals currently in episodes of depression.

Dr. Eisendrath has been teaching and lecturing worldwide about MBCT for over 15 years and directed the Mindfulness training program in the University of California San Francisco Department of Psychiatry. He was the Founding Director of the University of California San Francisco Depression Center as well a founding board member of the National Network of Depression Centers. Dr. Eisendrath has won numerous teaching awards and is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He also has a personal experience of depression that informs his efforts to bring MBCT to a wide audience.

Excerpts…

From the forward…

“Stuart Eisendrath has worked at the frontier of depression care for most of his distinguished career and has seen firsthand the merits and limitations of the myriad of approaches used to treat depression. The particular wisdom conveyed in these pages reflects the view that, for a large majority of patients, effective treatment of depression is not likely to be achieved via a single modality. Rather, effective care will involve sequencing interventions to enable patients to harness the benefits of multiple inputs.”

“This easily accessible and carefully crafted book provides readers with a clear-sighted distillation of the clinical wisdom behind MBCT and its particular capacity to address the mind states that often fuel and perpetuate depression. Two helpful conceptual views capture the essence of the approach and allow readers to move into a more fine-grained analysis of the ways these principles can be pragmatically applied on a daily basis.”

Insights from the text…

“One of the difficulties with depression is that not only do we have a tendency to make critical evaluations and judgments, but we accept them as if they are facts.”

“Thoughts, even the ones we may believe most strongly, are merely passing mental events and not facts to be taken literally.”

“When depressive episodes hit, you must see them for what they are: recurrences of your illness and not personal weakness or moral failure.”

“In mindful approaches to depression, the key is not to find the origins of negative feelings, but to change your relationship to them, so they no longer have significant power in your life.”

“Can you accept your suffering in this moment, right now? If you can do that and stop forecasting the future, your current pain will diminish too.”

“Mindfulness is focused on the present moment. It is released from the past or the future.”

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