BEYOND BLUE: REVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

GIVEAWAY ENDED
BEYOND BLUE
SURVIVING DEPRESSION & ANXIETY
AND MAKING THE MOST OF BAD GENES
BY THERESE J. BORCHARD

ABOUT THE BOOK:

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.

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.

THE FOLLOWING IS AN INTERVIEW RECENTLY FROM BLOG TALK RADIO WHERE ANNA FROM HACHETTE BOOK GROUPS INTERVIEWED THERESE BORCHARD. THE FIRST QUESTION ASKED, YOU WILL NOTE, IS ONE I SENT IN. THANKS, ANNA!

REVIEW:

BEYOND BLUE is an honest, funny, caring, and very helpful book full of important information about depression. It is a memoir that includes everything from obsessive-compulsive disorder, eating disorders, alcohol abuse, panic attacks, postpartum "blues" to being institutionalized in a psych ward, and if you can believe it, even more. If you have ever had any kind of depression or wondered if you do, or have someone in your life who does, then this is an important book for you to read.

Often misunderstood, depression is still looked upon as a secret disease to be hidden and in some places even ashamed of. It is amazing to read Therese Borchard's account of her own battles as one might not even think she has been through it as she presents an often humorous and also quite emotional tale of her experiences with her depression throughout her life.

The book is divided into three parts with a prelude and introduction coming first in which Borchard tells about her own trials and illness and why she wrote the book as well as what the reader will find in parts I and II. Part I is the memoir part and describes the early onset of the disease and how it progressed. She doesn't hold back but tells it all as she describes the horrors of the illness and how she was treated and her slow way back to good health again.

Lastly, Part II, describes how this is a biological illness of the brain and how it is also a progressive disease that kills brain cells as it physically attacks your body. She describes the different things she did and still does at times to keep things in check. She battled her own demons which helped her to recover. She discusses those things that are important to her in relationship to the illness and her life, and those are her faith, her marriage, children, and friends.

She tells about how medication, which people often think is a last resort, can be hard to take as different kinds of medicines work with different kinds of needs. It is often trial and error and that is so hard to go through to find the one that works. She writes about different kinds of depression like what she has being bipolar to the kind that comes about when things in a life change. This kind is called situational depression. Even stress can work on the brain to cause depression over time and manifest itself physically as well as mentally and emotionally.

Finally, and most surprising to me is when she talks about how suicide really isn't a call for help and attention as many think. Since depression effects women more than men because of women's hormonal changes, tend to be more susceptible to suicide. Usually it is a result of the pressure they feel from their job and their lack of a support system. Men's symptoms are harder to diagnose because they are not as obvious as in women.

GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO ANNA AND THE
HACHETTE BOOK GROUP, I
HAVE FIVE COPIES OF THIS
WONDERFUL BOOK TO GIVEAWAY!


THE RULES:

--U.S. AND CANADIAN RESIDENTS ONLY
--NO P. O. BOXES, PLEASE
--INCLUDE EMAIL ADDRESS IN COMMENT
--ALL ENTRIES/COMMENTS MUST BE
SEPARATE IN ORDER TO COUNT
AS MORE THAN ONE ENTRY


HOW TO ENTER:

+1 ENTRY: COMMENT ON SOMETHING INTERESTING YOU FIND ON THERESE BORCHARD'S WEBSITE WHEN YOU CLICK HERE. THERE ARE SOME VERY INTERESTING VIDEOS AND OTHER THINGS TO EXPLORE.

+1 MORE ENTRY: BLOG OR TWEET ABOUT THIS GIVEAWAY AND LEAVE A LINK I CAN FOLLOW IN THE ENTRY

GIVEAWAY ENDS AT
6 PM, EST, FEBRUARY 15
GOOD LUCK