Surviving Americas Depression
Epidemic: How to Find Morale,
Energy, and Community in a World
Gone Crazy by Bruce E. Levine
The Best Book I Have Ever Read On Depression...
The rate of depression in the U.S. has increased more than tenfold in the
last fifty years. By not seriously confronting societal sources of despair,
American mental health institutions have become part of the problem
rather than the solution.The good news is that age-old wisdom and
legitimate science--uncorrupted by the profit-margin pressures of
pharmaceutical and insurance corporations--have much to inform us about
revitalizing depressed people and a depressing culture. Surviving
Americas Depression Epidemic provides an alternate approach that
encompasses the whole of our humanity, society, and culture, and which
redefines depression in a way that makes enduring transformation more
likely.

Personal Review: Surviving Americas Depression Epidemic:
How to Find Morale, Energy, and Community in a World Gone
Crazy by Bruce E. Levine
The reviews here for this book so far have been pretty detached and
impersonal. I'm now going to provide a personal account. I do not say this
lightly: This book saved my life.
Last year I picked up Bruce Levine's "Surviving America's Depression
Epidemic" at Barnes & Noble as a sort of impulse buy. I was scouring the
self-help/psychology section during what was probably my worst
depressive episode of my entire life. I don't know what possessed me to
pick this particular book. I seriously wasn't expecting much. I wasn't
actually familar with the author and the title itself is sort of hokey-sounding.
I was prepared for nothing more than a superficial rewording of stuff that I'd
already heard a million times or some crackpot theory. However, as soon
as I got past the title and started on the introduction, I realized I was
reading something very, very different. Dr. Levine's book is well-written,
well-researched (the last 24 or so pages of the book consists of copious
bibliographical notes), and well-designed. But it isn't just rehashing of old
information with a new wrapper. Levine culls much insight out of the
available research on not only the nature of what we call "depression" but
also into the way we live.
What most struck me was that Levine absolutely refuses to oversimplify
the problem of depression. He tackles the issues from an expansive
sociological framework that puts what clinical psychology labels as an
"illness" into a wider historical, social, and personal context. His thesis is
as follows (quoting from the Introduction itself):
"Americans live in the age of industrialized medicine, and everyone - inside
and outside of health care - is now in the same boat. Doctors are
financially pressured to be speedy mechanics, and patients often recieve
assembly-line treatment, which can be a painful reminder of their
assembly-line lives. While most Americans manage to go to work and pay
their bills, more than a few struggle just to get out of bed, and growing
numbers feel fragile, hollow, hopeless, and defeated.
"In 1998, Martin Seligman, then president of the American Psychological
Association, spoke to the National Press club about an American
depression epidemic: '[W]e discovered two astonishing things about the
rate of depression across the century. The first was there now is between
ten and twenty times as much of it as there was fifty years ago. And the
second is that it has become a young person's problem. When I first
started working in depression thirty years ago... the average age of onset
was 29.5. Now the average age is between fourteen and fifteen.'
"Despite the unparalleled material wealth of the United States, we
Americans - especially our young - are increasingly unhappy. What is

happening in our society and culture? How is it that the more we have
come to rely on mental health professionals, the higher the rates of
depression? And are we in need of a different approach to overcoming
despair?"
Levine tackles these questions with tenacity and wisdom I've never seen in
any other book on depression. He redefines depression itself as a coping
mechanism to shut down the anguish we feel. He offers hope to those who
feel sensitive and misunderstood by relating historical examples (from
Abraham Lincoln to Kurt Cobain) and offers insights into how we as
individuals can find ourselves at odds with the society we grew up in.
Depression is not a disease to be anesthetized with drugs, but a vital cry of
our own humanity calling out to us in a largely dehumanizing world.
Doctors no longer treat us as individuals just when we truly need it, but
rather we become a list of symptoms and a consequent prescription.
This all may sound at odds with the current research on depression as a
biological disorder organic to the brain. However, Levine reveals that this
isn't at all at odds with the current RESEARCH (which has never supported
a purely chemical genesis for depression) but rather the current THEORY
of biological depression as popularized almost exclusively by
pharmaceutical industry propaganda. It's interesting that Levine wrote this
book several months prior to the widely publicised findings earlier this year
(originally made public by The Wall Street Journal in January 2008) of a
survey of studies submitted to the FDA that were never published. (The
survey revealed that the alleged efficacy of antidepressants may have
been highly inflated.)
Levine's plan of healing is empathetic, wise, and liberating. Unlike most
such book there are absolutely no exercises or tedious worksheets or
charts to fill out. Instead, Levine weaves in a hugely comprehensive list of
approaches to healing including nurturing emotional openness, fostering
friendships, using artistic expression, exercise, community activism and
even ritualism as a means of coping.
A good portion of his approach is influenced by Buddhist psychology, with
a particular emphasis on mindfulness and forgoing ego-attachments. This
application of Eastern meditative traditions to depression has also recently
been expounded upon by another group of psychologists in The Mindful
Way through Depression, which also came out last year. That book
provides excellent advice and tools for preventing relapse of depression,
although it lacks the social/emotional insights that Levine elaborates on
quite eloquently. That said, it is still an excellent resource.
I must state here and now that this book is not for people who have
already made up their minds about depression and already decided they
are "cured." If, however, you are like me and have not been helped by the
current mental health industry and still feel numb, hurting, and lost in your
life, I urge you to give this book a chance. One other point that I actually

found quite refreshing was his criticism of talk-therapies such as CBT, and
the clinical patient-therapist relationship. He acknowledges that such a
relationship (a kind of "paid friendship") may not be the most conducive to
healing and, in fact, may actually exacerbate the problem.
Had I heard what the book was about before I had the chance to actually
read it, I might have dismissed it. However, several months after finishing
it, my life has been completely transformed and I no longer feel so
"broken." The term life-affirming gets thrown around a lot these days. But I
cannot hesitate to call this a life-affirming read for anyone who is still
struggling.
Levine also takes an interesting angle that I was not aware of when I first
bought it (but apparently is in concert with the publisher's - Chelsea Green
Publishing - credo). Levine posits that the society of consumer culture that
contributes to depression cannot be sustainable in the long run. This is
interesting and, although it may seem irrelevant when you just want to feel
better, it actually helped me get out of my own head and see depression
as a cultural problem as well. In other words, it helped me stop taking
depression so personally. (This is an important point, and Chapter 5 deals
with the dangers of "Self Absorption.") It is truly liberating to realize there
may not be anything really wrong with YOU if you are depressed, but there
may indeed be some things very wrong with the society you live in.
And, if all that wasn't enough incentive to buy a copy, for the
environmentally conscientious among us, Chelsea Green publishes all
their books on recycled paper! You can't go wrong.
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