The Cognitive Behavioral Workbook for Depression: A Step-by-Step Program (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook)

I utilize this book almost every day with clients. It simplifies CBT into a digestible, understandable way, and empowers me clients to learn more about their maladaptive thinking and work towards healing and change. Highly recommend buying for you or your clients.

This workbook has been exactly what I have needed. I always wanted to change my negative thinking and get out of my depressed moods, but I never knew how. I have been using it in my counseling sessions, and it has done wonders. I'm halfway through, and I have already sensed positive differences in my thinking patterns. I'm no longer thinking negatively or sinking into a deep hole. If I find myself sinking, this book has shown me ways to snap out of it quickly. You need to do the exercises the book tells you to do! You can only get out of it whatever you put into it. As long as you can fully dedicate yourself to change and follow the exercises and easy to read and understand text, then you can find your way out of depressed, negative thinking and gain true inner peace, higher self-worth and increased self-confidence. I highly recommend this workbook for anyone who wants to get out of negative thinking and become a more positive and happy person.

I am a LPC and bought this to have some visual worksheets to help explain CBT to clients. I found it helpful for that purpose but overall its very basic information if you are looking from a licensed perspective. However, I would recommend this product to people who are struggling with depression and needing a step by step guide to help them get through on their own. Easy to understand language and good at explaining reasons and concepts.

This book provides in-depth, step-by-step strategies for defeating depression. The exercises and insights in this book are very much in contrast to prevailing counseling practices, which assume that if you merely talk about your depression, it will eventually resolve itself (and is more effective at providing revenue for counselors than it is at actually helping clients).Every page of this book contains helpful things that you can ACTUALLY DO to combat your depression. Not all of them will work for every individual, but the reader is free to try any of them, to see what works for themselves. Depressed people often feel powerless. This book is very empowering.This book is based on "Rational Emotive Therapy" (also called "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy"). But it is very practical, not theoretical. The basic idea is that you have enough control over your own thoughts and behaviors that you can break the cycle of depression by changing your thinking processes, and changing the activities that you choose to do.If you want a book that will allow you to passively "feel good" without investing any effort, this isn't for you. But if you want to get to work and re-gain control of your life, then you gotta buy this book!!!

I don't suffer from depression, but wanted to support a friend by working through the same book she was using. You don't have to be clinically depressed to benefit from this book. I find it really helpful in gaining insights about myself and enlarging my perspective of the world around me. Clearly written, well-organized and presented credibly by a therapist who has struggled with depression first-hand. I highly recommend for anyone interested in personal growth and self-understanding!

This book is great! It is very helpful and provides a lot of information to help you help yourself when you need the help.I would just like to say though, you have to do the work to get results. This is a workbook after all. There are charts you need to fill out, questions to answer, and you have to think. One thing I didn't like was that I had to think about things that didn't make me very happy. Sad things. I had to think through things to work out how to recover better and to be more happy.You don't get healthier by not doing work. It's the same for your mind.This is a good book and it will help you feel better, but you'll have to do the work it asks of you.

This book does offer good advice and it does recommend helpful, worthwhile exercises, but it reads like a dull high school textbook and even feels a bit condescending at times (Did you know that even celebrities have suffered from depression too?). On a personal note, there is one exercise I absolutely refuse: I WILL NOT write a poem about my depression! In point of fact, most of us are pretty awful poets, and writing a bad poem about my unhappiness just further recalls rather uninspiring high school memories. Thankfully, it's not difficult to think of an alternate means of fulfilling the purpose of this execrable exercise. To conclude, this workbook is so uninspiring as to lack motivational "kick". But if you are already slogging through life in general, perhaps you can summon the will to slog through this workbook as well - I won't deny cognitive behavioral therapy's efficacy nor the benefits of commiting youself to the course of thought and action described in this workbook. Good luck and get well!

I run a couple of CBT groups in a MH residential treatment program. I was looking to specifically address depression, and this workbook and handouts have been very helpful in creating a new group.