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Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, Jon Kabat-Zinn

The Mindful Way through Depression Publication date : August 27, 2009

This book aims to break the mental habits that can lead to despair.

Depression sufferers would do anything to overcome their negative feelings. Yet nothing seems to work, so they end up concluding that they lack the aptitude for happiness.

The authors argue that this is the wrong approach, that depression is not caused by moods but by how we react, and that we are victims of our often heroic efforts to stop feeling sad, dejected, spiritless, out of sorts or simply depressed.

Their original, detailed programme combines the latest scientific findings — which give us a radically new understanding of how depression and chronic sadness are fostered — with a description of forms of meditation that have been part of Buddhist culture for thousands of years.

This book shows how to develop mindfulness — a particular type of consciousness described in several Asian spiritual traditions — in order to break free of negative moods and rediscover the joys of life. By combining Western cognitive science with Eastern traditions, the authors have developed a clinically proven method to reduce the recurrence of chronic unhappiness and depression.

An accompanying CD guides the reader, a step at a time, through a number of meditation exercises, deepening and strengthening the learning experience.

A psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Zindel Segal is Head of the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy Unit at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto.

Jon Kabat-Zinn is Professor of Medicine Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he heads the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society. One of the world's first advocates and teachers of “mindfulness meditation”, he is on the Board of Directors of the Mind and Life Institute, which is dedicated to fostering dialogue between science and Buddhism.