This close to happy : a reckoning with depression
(Book)

Book Cover
Average Rating
Published
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, [2017].
Status
Central - Adult Biography
B MERKIN D
1 available

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Central - Adult BiographyB MERKIN DAvailable

Description

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More Details

Published
New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, [2017].
Format
Book
Physical Desc
288 pages : portrait ; 22 cm
Street Date
1702
Language
English

Notes

Description
"This Close to Happy is the first account to endeavor to tell the story of what it feels to suffer a lifetime's worth of clinical depression from the inside out and from a woman's point of view"--,Provided by publisher.
Description
"Despair is always described as dull," writes Daphne Merkin, "when the truth is that despair has a light all its own, a lunar glow, the color of mottled silver." This Close to Happy--Merkin's rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression--captures this strange light. Daphne Merkin has been hospitalized three times: first, in grade school, for childhood depression; years later, after her daughter was born, for severe postpartum depression; and later still, after her mother died, for obsessive suicidal thinking. Recounting this series of hospitalizations, as well as her visits to myriad therapists and psychopharmacologists, Merkin fearlessly offers what the child psychiatrist Harold Koplewicz calls "the inside view of navigating a chronic psychiatric illness to a realistic outcome." The arc of Merkin's affliction is lifelong, beginning in a childhood largely bereft of love and stretching into the present, where Merkin lives a high-functioning life and her depression is manageable, if not "cured." "The opposite of depression," she writes with characteristic insight, "is not a state of unimaginable happiness ... but a state of relative all-right-ness." In this dark yet vital memoir, Merkin describes not only the harrowing sorrow that she has known all her life, but also her early, redemptive love of reading and gradual emergence as a writer. Written with an acute understanding of the ways in which her condition has evolved as well as affected those around her, This Close to Happy is an utterly candid coming-to-terms with an illness that many share but few talk about, one that remains shrouded in stigma. In the words of the distinguished psychologist Carol Gilligan, "It brings a stunningly perceptive voice into the forefront of the conversation about depression, one that is both reassuring and revelatory."--Dust jacket.

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Citations

APA Citation, 7th Edition (style guide)

Merkin, D. (2017). This close to happy: a reckoning with depression (First edition.). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Merkin, Daphne. 2017. This Close to Happy: A Reckoning With Depression. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Chicago / Turabian - Humanities (Notes and Bibliography) Citation, 17th Edition (style guide)

Merkin, Daphne. This Close to Happy: A Reckoning With Depression Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

MLA Citation, 9th Edition (style guide)

Merkin, Daphne. This Close to Happy: A Reckoning With Depression First edition., Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.

Note! Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy. Citation formats are based on standards as of August 2021.

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