USEFUL books for Depression, Depressive Disorder.

While it is normal to occasionally feel sad, when a person has major depressive disorder, they experience a severely depressed mood that can remain for years at a time. This is often referred to as depression, which can interfere with daily functioning and cause distress for both the person with the disorder and their family. With an estimated 16 percent of adults suffering from depression, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, cases of depression are by no means isolated.

With everyone from doctors to therapists to herbal specialists chiming on the subject, reading more about depression can help both patients and caregivers make better decisions. If you are high in desire to learn but low on the wallet, there are options. To help out, I have gathered the below top 25 free and useful eBooks about depression. They are authored by everyone from licensed therapists to those who have suffered some type of depression.

Top Free and Useful eBooks About General Depression

1. How to Survive the Loss of a Love
   Because there is nothing more saddening than the death of a loved one, stop here. This book by three professionals has been read by over two million people. All 67 parts are available to read with just a click and the part on Understanding Loss is a good introduction.
2. How to Heal Depression
   Harold H. Bloomfield and Peter McWilliams return in this book on depression. Four parts include understanding depression, healing the brain, healing the mind, and continuing healing are all shared. You can also learn more on how St. John’s Wort is used in the treatment of depression.
3. You Can’t Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought
   Because everyone is susceptible to negative thought, not just those with depression, click here. The book is intended for people with any life threatening illness. Chapters include the disease, the cure, and even the three steps to positive thought.
4. A Collection of Poems About Depression
   If you or someone you know are suffering from depression, it can be easy to feel alone. In this collected work, the author shares poems made in the 90’s when suffering from depression. Peter Stone shares about ten years’ worth of experience battling the disease.
5. Cure Chronic Anxiety and Depression
   Think you may have either? Then check out this free eBook from Sarah Shikitao-Brown. Natural happiness is also a topic of the book.
6. Help for Anxiety, Phobias, OCD, and Depression
   Because depression can also come with other mental health problems, have a read of this book. Terry Dixon gives insight into anxiety-related problems and how to deal with them. It also provides information that can be helpful for leading the reader toward a better understanding of the causes and cures for anxiety-based problems.
7. Meditation and Depression
   Get an academic view of depression with a visit here. Willoughby B. Britton of the department of psychology at the University of Arizona is your author. Chapters are on a prelude to medication, the reversal of depression, the physiological effects of mindfulness, and much more.
8. Understanding Depression
   Visit here for more of an online guide than traditional eBook. The folks at Help Guide feature basic information such as the signs, symptoms, causes, and help for those with depression. There are also loads of useful links on the topic.

Top Free and Useful eBooks About Psychology

9. Online Self Help Psychology Book
   Licensed psychotherapist Thayer White authors this book for people with mental health changes in their lives. He argues that individuals can do 90 percent of therapy themselves. Chapters include creativity, weight loss, emotion, men and women, along with many other topics.
10. Dream Psychology
    You don’t have to be an expert in psychology to recognize the name Sigmund Freud. One of the founders of the science authors this very book on the topic. Visit here to get it as HTML, Kindle, plain text, and more.
11. Studies in the Psychology of Sex
    Is sexual frustration the cause or downsides to your depression? Then check out this free, popular choice from Havelock Ellis. There are several parts, all of which are available for free.
12. Psychology and Achievement
    The thought of unfulfilled goals can be depressing to anyone. This free eBook by Warren Hilton examines this very thing. Wasted effort, wasted money, usefulness, and other topics are explored.
13. Hierarchy of Needs
    Because everyone has several needs, see which are most important to you with a read of this book. Abraham Maslow is considered to be the father of Humanistic Psychology and author of this eBook. There is even a diagram of needs included which is often referred to in psychology.
14. Classics in Psychology
    Get historical essays on the topic from 1855 to 1914. Many psychology students and experts often read this text as part of their studies. Emerging topics such as methodology, analyses, individual experiences, and more are all featured.
15. Elements of Psychology
    Similar to the above, this text is often read by students and doctors of psychology. It was written at about 1923 and has been reconstructed for the modern day. Over 250 pages are available to read.
16. The Conundrums of Psychology
    Sam Vaknin writes on the many problems of psychology. They include normal personality, the myth of mental illness, history of personality disorders, and many more. You can read the entire thing online or download from Scrib’d.
17. Just Stop Having Problems, Stupid
    Sick of all the “psycho-babble?” So was Dr. Matt, a self-professed fake doctor who takes on realistic problems in a realistic way. Five outrageous chapters include “How to Compare Russell Crowe and Stone Phillips.”

Other Top Free and Useful eBooks About Depression

18. Hypericum and Depression
    What is hypericum and how can it be used to treat depression? These and other questions are answered in this free eBook. It also includes summaries of medical studies done on the treatment.
19. The Dark Side of Sleeping Pills
    We all may have turned to sleeping pills at one time or other. However, Dr. Daniel Kripke discusses them in detail and the risks associated with them. Better alternatives are also looked at.
20. Brighten Your Life
    Dr. Kripke returns again in this free eBook. It is about how sleep can be used as a treatment for depression. How light is used in modern days takes center stage.
21. A Book of Infinite Possibilities
    Melody Bass shares just what the title promises. She discusses how to focus on changing your thoughts, loving your life, and learning the art of trusting. Readers even stopped into comment on their approval of the book.
22. Dream Interpretation as a Science
    Is a cigar a cigar? Your dreams can give you more insight to your depression or mental state than you think. Christina Sponias take on the topic in this free 86 page excerpt of her book.
23. An Amateur’s Guide to Spirituality
    Could spirituality be a treatment for your depression, but you don’t know how? Then check out this guide from Ella Roberts to get the opinion of someone of the same mind set. She knows what is like to be lost spiritually and to ask the questions that need answering.
24. Mother Teresa: A Biography
    Learn more about one of the most adored figures of our times. The book follows the journey of Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu from her humble Albanian birth to worldwide celebrity as Mother Teresa. All 174 pages are available as a PDF.
25. 101 Motivational Quotes
    Finally, if you just need some inspiration, click here. Steven Grabek shares quotes from society’s greatest thinkers in this free eBook. It also tackles the loss of motivation and procrastination.

The above top 25 free and useful eBooks about depression are for educational and entertainment purposes only. Please consult a licensed physician or therapist if experiencing depression or before making changes to any medication plan.

10 Psychological Experiments That Went Horribly Wrong

 

Psychology as we know it is a relatively young science, but since its inception it has helped us to gain a greater understanding of ourselves and our interactions with the world. Many psychological experiments have been valid and ethical, allowing researchers to make new treatments and therapies available, and giving other insights into our motivations and actions. Sadly, others have ended up backfiring horribly — ruining lives and shaming the profession. Here are ten psychological experiments that spiraled out of control.

 

10. Stanford Prison Experiment

 

Prisoners and guards

In 1971, social psychologist Philip Zimbardo set out to interrogate the ways in which people conform to social roles, using a group of male college students to take part in a two-week-long experiment in which they would live as prisoners and guards in a mock prison. However, having selected his test subjects, Zimbardo assigned them their roles without their knowledge, unexpectedly arresting the “prisoners” outside their own homes. The results were disturbing. Ordinary college students turned into viciously sadistic guards or spineless (and increasingly distraught) prisoners, becoming deeply enmeshed within the roles they were playing. After just six days, the distressing reality of this “prison” forced Zimbardo to prematurely end the experiment.

 

9. The Monster Study

 

Wendell Johnson, of the University of Iowa, who was behind the study

In this study, conducted in 1939, 22 orphaned children, 10 with stutters, were separated equally into two groups: one with a speech therapist who conducted “positive” therapy by praising the children’s progress and fluency of speech; the other with a speech therapist who openly chastised the children for the slightest mistake. The results showed that the children who had received negative responses were badly affected in terms of their psychological health. Yet more bad news was to come as it was later revealed that some of the children who had previously been unaffected developed speech problems following the experiment. In 2007, six of the orphan children were awarded $925,000 in compensation for emotional damage that the six-month-study had left them with.

 

8. MK-ULTRA

 

Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, also seen top

The CIA performed many unethical experiments into mind control and psychology under the banner of project MK-ULTRA during the 50s and 60s. Theodore Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber, is reported to have been a test subject in the CIA’s disturbing experiments, which may have contributed to his mental instability. In another case, the administration of LSD to US Army biological weapons expert Frank Olson is thought to have sparked a crisis of conscience, inspiring him to tell the world about his research. Instead, Olson is said to have committed suicide, jumping from a thirteenth-story hotel room window, although there is strong evidence that he was murdered. This doesn’t even touch on the long-term psychological damage other test subjects are likely to have suffered.

 

7. Elephant on LSD

 

In 1962, Warren Thomas, the director of Lincoln Park Zoo in Oklahoma City, injected an elephant named Tusko with 3,000 times the typical human dose of LSD. It was an attempt to make his mark on the scientific community by determining whether the drug could induce “musth” — the aggressiveness and high hormone levels that male elephants experience periodically. The only contribution Thomas made was to create a public relations disaster as Tusko died almost immediately after collapsing and going into convulsions.

 

6. Milgram Experiment

 

The Milgram Experiment underway

In 1963, in the wake of the atrocities of the Holocaust, Stanley Milgram set out to test the hypothesis that there was something special about the German people that had allowed them to participate in genocide. Under the pretense of an experiment into human learning, Milgram asked normal members of the public to ask questions to a man attached to an electric-shock generator and shock him in increasing measure when he answered incorrectly. The man was an actor, the shocks fake; but the participants didn’t know this. The terrifying part? People overwhelmingly obeyed the commands of the experimenter, even when the man screamed in apparent agony and begged for mercy. A little evil in all of us, perhaps?

 

5. Tony LaMadrid

 

Many medicated schizophrenics enrolled in a University of California study that required them to stop taking their medication in a program that started in 1983. The study was meant to give information that would allow doctors to better treat schizophrenia, but rather it messed up the lives of many of the test subjects, 90% of whom relapsed into episodes of mental illness. One participant, Tony LaMadrid, leaped to his death from a rooftop six years after first enrolling in the study.

 

4. Pit of Despair

 

A rhesus monkey infant in one of Harlow’s isolation chambers

Psychologist Harry Harlow was obsessed with the concept of love, but rather than writing poems or love songs, he performed sick, twisted experiments on monkeys during the 1970s. One of his experiments revolved around confining the monkeys in total isolation in an apparatus he called the “well of despair” (a featureless, empty chamber depriving the animal of any stimulus or socialization) — which resulted in his subjects going insane and even starving themselves to death in two cases. Harlow ignored the criticism of his colleagues, and is quoted as saying, “How could you love monkeys?” The last laugh was on him, however, as his horrific treatment of his subjects is acknowledged as being a driving force behind the development of the animal rights movement and the end of such cruel experiments.

 

3. The Third Wave

 

Running along a similar theme similar to the Milgram experiment, The Third Wave, carried out in 1967, was an experiment that set out to explore the ways in which even democratic societies can become infiltrated by the appeal of fascism. Using a class of high school students, the experimenter created a system whereby some students were considered members of a prestigious order. The students showed increased motivation to learn, yet, more worryingly, became eager to get on board with malevolent practices, such as excluding and ostracizing non-members from the class. Even more scarily, this behavior was gleefully continued outside of the classroom. After just four days, the experiment was considered to be slipping out of control and was ceased.

 

2. Homosexual Aversion Therapy

 

In the 1960s homosexuality was frequently depicted as a mental illness, with many individuals seeking (voluntarily or otherwise) a way to “cure” themselves of their sexual attraction to members of the same sex. Experimental therapies at the time included aversion therapy — where homosexual images were paired with such things as electric shocks and injections that caused vomiting. The thought was that the patient would associate pain with homosexuality. Rather than “curing” homosexuality, these experiments profoundly psychologically damaged the patients, with at least one man dying from the “treatment” he received, after he went into a coma.

 

1. David Reimer

 

David Reimer

In 1966, when David Reimer was 8 months old, his circumcision was botched and he lost his penis to burns. Psychologist John Money suggested that baby David be given a sex change. The parents agreed, but what they didn’t know was that Money secretly wanted to use David as part of an experiment to prove his views that gender identity was not inborn, but rather determined by nature and upbringing. David was renamed Brenda, surgically altered to have a vagina, and given hormonal supplements — but tragically the experiment backfired. “Brenda” acted like a stereotypical boy throughout childhood, and the Reimer family began to fall apart. At 14, Brenda was told the truth, and decided to go back to being David. He committed suicide at the age of 38.