Self-Help: A Pocket Guide to Therapies

Lack of insurance, geography, physical disability, and fear of treatment make it hard for many people to get proper care. Self-help is part of the solution. It's often recommended by therapists. Carl C. Bell, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Windsor University School of Medicine, has said, "You can't do everything in a psychiatrist's office in an hour. You've got to do some homework."

Treating psychological problems with self-help alone is experimental and treating a serious case this way is very risky. For some readers, the most important part of this ebook is its information on getting help from a qualified professional and coping in a moment of crisis.

In 2013, someone typed "self-help" into a search engine and got 250,000 results. Finding the few good books among the tremendous number of bad ones is hard, for the professional as well as the layman.

Experts have written books on self-help. One is based on polls of more than 3,000 mental health professionals, but it came out in 2006. There's a pressing need for up-to-date information.

In his 2016 book, a therapist explains that some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) respond to self-help. At Stanford University, researchers have done pioneering work in the use of therapeutic breathing for PTSD. Controlled breathing has been shown to help with a variety of problems, including anxiety, panic disorder, and depression. So much has been learned in recent years about lifestyle – basic lifestyle, nutrition, and traditional Asian practices. Depression is often the result of stress. People who are prone to depression should practice good stress management. Of all the things that help with stress, the best are low-risk, low-cost, and easy.

What's safe and what's not? The facts may surprise you. The yoga boom has resulted in more yoga classes and more yoga injuries seen in hospital emergency rooms. There are even cautions with meditation. It can help but it's not for everybody.

Self-Help: A Pocket Guide to Therapies is one of the very few books with facts about self-help. It's well-documented, with 161 references, but it reads like self-help, not a science textbook.