Self-Management of Depression: A Manual for Mental Health and Primary Care Professionals

With growing access to health information, people who suffer from depression are increasingly eager to play an active role in the management of their symptoms. The goal of self-management is to support patients in monitoring and managing their symptoms and provide them with additional resources to promote recovery, enhance quality of life, and prevent relapse. For clinicians, self-management holds promise for improving practice efficiency and efficacy by helping patients maximize their improvement outside of treatment sessions. Self-Management of Depression is written for clinicians who wish to empower their patients to take more active steps to manage depression. Chapters cover care management, self-assessment, exercise, self-help books and computer programs, meditation, and peer-support groups and strategies for how to incorporate self-management into a treatment plan are described. Reproducible handouts to support patients are also available online. This book is relevant to clinical psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, social workers and primary care physicians.

About the Author

Albert Yeung is Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, MA, USA.

Greg Feldman is Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, Simmons College and Research Fellow, Depression Clinical and Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital, MA, USA.

Maurizio Fava is Executive Vice Chair, Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Psychiatry and Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, MA, USA.