Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression

Presela Anne said Gripping & Honest ---- LOVED IT.. This book is a complete necessity for writers who suffer from depression, and also anyone else who is seeking information on how depression effects those who suffer from it. Each chapter is different, and from writers who deal with depression, or their loved ones who have suffered from this debilitating condition. Fascinating and informative, and also written with compassion and understanding. A necessity on my bookshelf. Highly recommend it, for those who are depressed, or those who want to understand someone they love who has d. A Welcome Anthology If you are seeking a "Chicken Soup for the Depressed Soul" brimming with uplifting stories, this book is not the source.Unholy Ghost reflects the ordeal of depression via the perspectives of those coping with it. The DSM-IV provides a skeletal structure for understanding the diagnosis. These essays add flesh to the framework. The reader is given an opportunity to intimately connect with each writer's experience of anguish. Some might criticize these essays as self-absorbed and declare the writers to be imperfect. Well, that's the. "Hits the nail on the head" according to Jotham W. Bailey. As a man who has been depressed all my life, whether I knew it or not, Unholy Ghosts expresses so much of what I have felt all these years. It helps me realize that I am not the only on and that there are some who can put depression into words. I recomend it for anyone living with their own depression or living with someone who is depressed.

Unholy Ghost is a unique collection of essays about depression that, in the spirit of William Styron's Darkness Visible, finds vivid expression for an elusive illness suffered by more than one in five Americans today. The twenty-two stories that make up this book will offer solace and enlightenment to all readers.. Russell Banks's and Chase Twichell's essays represent husbandand-wife perspectives on depression; Rose Styron's contribution about her husband's struggle with melancholy is paired with an excerpt from William Styron's Darkness Visible; and the book's editor, Nell Casey, juxtaposes her own essay about seeing her sister through her depression with Maud Casey's account of this experience. These companion pieces portray the complicated bond -- a constant grasp for mutual understandingforged by depressives and their family members.With an introduction by Kay Redfield Jamison, Unholy Ghost allows the bewildering experience of depression to be adequately and beautifully rendered. Susanna Kaysen, writing for the first time about depression since Girl, Interrupted, criticizes herself and others for making too much of the illness. Meri Danquah describes the challenges of racism and depression. Unlike any other memoir of depression, however, Unholy Ghost
"My heart pumped dread," writes Lesley Dormen. Some face depression as a sudden interruption of a previously gratifying life; others have never known life without it. The writers' descriptions of "dwelling in depression's dark wood" (William Styron) are disturbing and haunting, laden with vivid imagery. Some attempt to analyze their depression; others just want you to know what it's like. --Joan Price. David Karp describes his depression as sometimes a "grief knot" in his throat, sometimes chest pain like a heart attack, sometimes "an awful heaviness" in his eyes and head. "A reader on melancholy," the editor calls this book: a collection of 22 modern essays about depression by writers (several well known) who know their subject intimately. Their words wrestle to express their vision, their gloom, their attempts to cope, their interactions, their isolation, and, often, their reactions to medications. Nan