Books That Should Be Read
hga: Ah, that turned out to be easier than I expected, after I remember that I always keep a copy to give to someone depressed (it fully satisfies the "or at least should know about" criteria):Feeling Good, The New Mood Therapy by David D. Burns, M.D. (http://www.amazon.com/Feeling-Good-Therapy-Revised-Updated/d...)This is the best popular treatment of cognitive therapy (nowadays cognitive behavioral therapy, I haven't read this newer edition).  Anyone who's depressed really needs to try this out, with or without the aid of anti-depressants.The thesis is that you, at least in part, make yourself depressed by telling yourself depressing things that are largely false, about yourself, about what others are saying and doing to/about to you, etc.; in general, incorrect filtering of what you perceive.So you identify those things and do you best to correct your mis-perceptions.  Since I read an earlier edition in the '80s, behavioral therapy has been added to the mix, and that's supposed to help (I can't vouch for it either way).Anyway, after I read this (and a few other cognitive psychology works) talking therapy became absolutely useless ... I'd "fixed" myself as much as possible in this way.(Knowledge of this is also really useful to understanding the end of the Evangelion anime TV series (seriously, the creator was coming out of a multi-year bad period, "living by not dying").)