Beyond Blue

Publisher's Summary. Therese Borchard may be one of the frankest, funniest people on the planet. That, combined with her keen writing abilities has made her Beliefnet blog, Beyond Blue, one of the most trafficked blogs on the site.

BEYOND BLUE, the book, is part memoir/part self-help. It describes Borchard's experience of living with manic depression as well as providing cutting-edge research and information on dealing with mood disorders. By exposing her vulnerability, she endears herself immediately to the reader and then reduces even the most depressed to laughter as she provides a companion on the journey to recovery and the knowledge that the reader is not alone.

Comprised of four sections and twenty-one chapters, BEYOND BLUE covers a wide range of topics from codependency to addiction, poor body image to postpartum depression, from alternative medicine to psychopharmacology, managing anxiety to applying lessons from therapy. Because of her laser wit and Erma Bombeck sense of humor, every chapter is entertaining as well as serious.

Review. Therese Borchard is a bright, funny, writer who suffers from mental illness and fights daily to keep her sanity. In the first half of Beyond Blue, Borchard details her 18 month bout with suicidal depression and her struggle to recover. While the second half of Beyond Blue reads like a self-help guide for dealing with mental illness.

In the memoir part of Beyond Blue, Borchard does a great job of destigmatizing mental illness. And Borchard’s memoir is no disease of the week type memoir; rather her personal scars are served up with wit and empathy. For example, I loved this passage:

“Hi. I’m Therese. I’m a manic-depressive, an alcoholic, and an adult child of an alcoholic; a codependent, a boundaries violator, and a stage-four people pleaser; an information hoarder or a clutter magnet, an Internet abuser, and an obsessive-compulsive or ritual performing weirdo; a sugar addict; a caffeine junkie; a reformed binge smoke, and an exercise fanatic, a hormonally imbalanced female, a PMS-prone time bomb, and a sexually dysfunctional or neutered creature; a workaholic; an HSP (highly sensitive person) and, of course, I’m Catholic. Which could possibly explain some of the above.”

Beyond Blue is the book that I would buy for any friend suffering from depression or other mood disorders.



Publisher: Center Street (January 6, 2010), 288 pages
Advance Review Copy Provided Courtesy of the Publisher.