Raising an Optimistic Child: A Proven Plan for Depresion-Proofing Young Children--for Life
(McGraw-Hill, 2006) by Bob Murray and Alicia Fortinberry

Creating Optimism:
A Proven Seven-Step Program for Overcoming Depression
(McGraw-Hill, 2004) by Bob Murray and Alicia Fortinberry

February 2004

By Bob Murray, PhD and Alicia Fortinberry, MS

When someone is depressed, the impulse is to offer advice to help them feel more optimistic, but Bob Murray, PhD, and Alicia Fortinberry, MS, know this advice rarely works. They also know you don't need to have years of complicated psychology to reclaim what you are genetic programmed for--happiness.

For twenty years, they have been healing depression with the widely successful and unconventional methods that form the basis of their Uplift Program. With a 94% success rate (based on follow-up questionnaires up to 2 years later), their methods have proven far more effective than drugs, psychotherapy, or both treatments combined.

In Creating Optimism: A Proven 7-Step Program for Overcoming Depression (McGraw-Hill; January '04; 007-141785-0; $22.95), the authors offer a breakthrough approach for healing depression that relies on the truth of what we desperately need as social human beings: strong, healing, supportive relationships that serve as a buffer against the pressures and emotional isolation of modern life.

Including the latest research in anthropology, neurobiology, psychology, psychiatry, and mind-body therapies, they lay bare the myths and failures of many touted depression "solutions" (anti-depressants, traditional psychotherapy, and being positive) and provide a blueprint for structuring relationships that stimulate self-esteem, competence, and a strong sense of purpose and shared goals.

Writing from the experience of over 20 years of research and practice, including healing Alicia's depression, the authors believe there is a powerful connection between strong relationships and a healthy existence. "If your relationships are supportive and fulfilling you can be healthy and happy. You can free yourself from depression and become optimistic about your life," say Murray and Fortinberry.

Murray and Fortinberry offer distinct insights and unique, concrete tools that draw on new research in the fields of:

• Anthropology: How the pathogenic effects of modern society and our forced migration away from the traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle are largely to blame for our depression pandemic.

• Neurobiology: How the failure of relationships between adults and young children by alters the structure and chemistry in crucial areas of our brains.

• Psychology: Erecting functional boundaries in relationships, and identifying the true origins of self-destructive behavior and negative self-talk

• Psychiatry: The limits of antidepressants-they only work for about 60% of people at best.

• Somatization: Up to 80% of all people who visit physicians are suffering from somatization-- emotional states transformed into physical symptoms--of depression or anxiety.

• Mind-Body Therapies: Movement exercises to help let go of dysfunctional and defensive postures that have been adopted in response to unhappy relationships.

Creating Optimism includes proven techniques for identifying dysfunctional behavior and changing it, a powerful action plan a for establishing and maintaining healthy relationships, potent mind-body healing techniques and exercises that allow for new healthier ways of thinking, and valuable charts, questionnaires, and self-tests.

Solutions to cure depression exist, and with the exercises and lessons Murray and Fortinberry use to help thousands of people in private sessions, workshops and seminars, depression sufferers will finally be able to undo the effects of our abusive society and learned patterns of self-defeating behaviors.

Creating Optimism: A Proven, Seven-Step Program for Overcoming Depression
February 2004
McGraw-Hill
ISBN 0-07-141785-0
224 Pages
$22.95 US
www.creatingoptimism.com

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About the Authors

Dr Bob Murray is a widely published psychologist and expert on emotional health and optimal relationships. Alicia Fortinberry is a psychotherapist, health writer and executive coach. Together they are the founders of the highly successful Uplift Program, and authors of Raising an Optimistic Child (McGraw-Hill, 2006) and Creating Optimism (McGraw-Hill, 2004).

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