The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Depression: Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to Move Through Depression and Create a Life Worth Living

What if depression could lead to positive change? Written by acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) cofounder Kirk Strosahl and Patricia Robinson, this revised edition of the best-selling classic, The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Depression includes updated research on self-compassion, mindfulness, and neuroscience to help you live a more meaningful life.

If you suffer from depression, you may feel like you are living under a perpetual raincloud, even when it’s sunny outside. If left untreated, clinical depression can damage relationships, cause problems at work, lead to substance abuse, and even make it more difficult to overcome physical illnesses. You may feel too tired and scared to reach out for help, or you may try to avoid your feelings altogether. But you should know that there are little, effective ways you can overcome your depression, one day at a time.

This fully revised and updated second edition of The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Depression will show you how changing daily behaviors and practicing new mindfulness skills can literally reshape your brain. Rather than fruitlessly trying to avoid your depression, you’ll learn to focus on living a productive life by accepting your feelings.

There are hundreds of books that will try to help you overcome or put an end to depression. But what if you could use your depression to change your life for the better? Your symptoms may be signals that something in your life needs to change. Learning to understand and interpret these signals is much more important than ignoring or avoiding them—approaches that only make the situation worse. This workbook uses techniques from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) to offer a new treatment plan for depression that will help accept your feelings instead of fruitlessly trying to avoid them. This new edition will include skills based on new research and contributions from mindfulness, self-compassion, and neuroscience.

Using the skills outlined in this book, you’ll be able to work through your depression, experience greater peace and well-being, and go on to create a better life.

Kirk D. Strosahl, PhD, is cofounder of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), a cognitive behavioral approach that has gained widespread adoption in the mental health and substance-abuse communities. He is coauthor of Brief Interventions for Radical Change and In This Moment: Five Steps to Transcending Stress Using Mindfulness and Neuroscience. Strosahl provides training and consultation services for Mountainview Consulting Group, Inc. He is a pioneer in the movement to bring behavioral health services into primary care. He resides in Portland, OR.

Patricia J. Robinson, PhD, is director of training and program evaluation at Mountainview Consulting Group, Inc., a firm that assists health care systems with integrating behavioral health services into primary care settings. She is coauthor of Real Behavior Change in Primary Care and The Mindfulness and Acceptance Workbook for Depression. After exploring primary care psychology as a researcher, she devoted her efforts to its dissemination in rural America, urban public health departments, and military medical treatment facilities. Robinson resides in Portland, OR.

Foreword writer Steven C. Hayes, PhD, is Nevada Foundation Professor and director of clinical training in the department of psychology at the University of Nevada, Reno. An author of forty-one books and nearly 600 scientific articles, his career has focused on analysis of the nature of human language and cognition, and its application to the understanding and alleviation of human suffering and promotion of human prosperity. His work has received several awards, including the Impact of Science on Application Award from the Society for the Advancement of Behavior Analysis, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies.