Review of "The Depression of Grief" by Alan Wolfelt

 A few reviews ago, I stated that one blanket review would cover all of Alan Wolfelt's books.  Apparently though, I have to make an exception for "The Depression of Grief."  Now, Alan Wolfelt has a doctorate.  And I assume that that doctorate might be in psychology, although I may be wrong.  (Perhaps it's a doctorate in marketing.)  In any case, he has been doing counseling, running a counseling centre, and publishing books on psychology related counseling for a number of years.  So I was rather astonished to find that he does not seem to understand what depression is, at all.  He seems to think that depression is just a slightly more extreme form of sadness.  If you are sad too much, or too long, you are depressed.  That seems to be his way of thinking about it.  Which betrays a massive misunderstanding of the condition.  He also repeats the fairly common perception of depression and anxiety as being, perhaps, two facets of the same condition, and treatable by the same processes.  Which is something that I find highly questionable, and which other people have found problematic when they run into programs that purport to treat both anxiety and depression in the same way and at the same time and through the same processes.  But that is perhaps diverging a little bit from the central weaknesses of Wolfelt's book.

Again, this is not to say that "The Depression of Grief" is useless.  It probably won't harm anybody, and it'll definitely help some.  There is decent advice about steps to take, even if that advice is rather pedestrian and can be obtained in pretty much any book on the topic.