Books to help someone that's majorly depressed

What are the best books/reads for someone currently suffering from clinical depression and looking to get back to feeling better?

I lost my job 4 months ago, was basically outsourced and it sent me down a severe spiral. I maybe leave the house once or twice a week. I'm currently reading a mediocre self-help book as well as Catch-22 but my psychologist told me I should read some more "light reading like John Grisham's The Firm" because some of the classics and self-help books might be a little too daunting at this point."
Would you agree with him? Is there a book that helped you get out of a funk?

Pls rspnd

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Pls

Depression isn't real you moron, but go ahead, keep scoffing down pills and reading self help books made solely to make money.

If you want to really get out of that funk, then actually contribute to your happiness by working on your hobbies or interests, taking with people helps too but don't bore them with the typical 'I'm soooooo sad :(', just shoot the shit with them.

Most importantly of all, fuck off to

Thanks for the contribution to the thread

You need to expose yourself to new ideas and ways of living. Anything with a philosophical bent will do this. To paraphrase that chick from that movie "I couldn't figure out how to live, so I'm willing to listen to somebody else tell me how." Or something like that.

Bump

...

this desu. depression is a meme OP. just keep reading everything, until you have read enough to realize the only reason you don't leave the house is because you don't want to leave the house. your psychologist is a shill. choose Will over "sadness."

Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

This.

the very fact that you are reading anything instead of just laying in your bed and staring at the ceiling, letting the numbness engulf you until you finally go back to sleep becuase your body doesn't even care any more is good.

Anything that sparks your interest OP is worth reading.

theres a lot of self help embedded into that "light reading" too.

I personally like absurdist, surreal.

but i also like learning about new things
or keeping myself up to date with my other areas of expertise.

i cant imagine reading will help much with your depression. you're probably not going to find any epiphanies or answers there. read what engages you the most and whatever you find enjoyable, don't set out to find a particular kind that best "suits depression". read whatever sounds appealing to you with your depression in mind - if you want to wallow in self-pity and sadness for a bit (nothing wrong with a bit of self-indulgent sadness in moderation) then read sad, depressing books. if you want to read something to take your mind off how shit everything is, read something lighter or something that provides a decent amount of escapism.
also if you're depressed, don't set any kind of huge reading goal because it will make you feel like shit when you inevitably fail - your psych is right, aiming for thick classics might be a bit much. depression can make it hard as fuck to concentrate and you'll feel like a worthless dumbass if you can't follow it. do things you enjoy, and if one of those things is reading books, just read whatever. check out the Veeky Forums wiki in the sticky, heaps of recommendation charts are sorted by genre/type/whatever.
good luck man.

depression isn't a meme, i'm afraid. but your point of not thinking too hard about it and instead working to get rid of it, through hobbies and interests, is valid.
seconded

Some humorous lit would be good, maybe something like the Hitchhiker's Guide series. Maybe something like mysteries, where someone's solving a problem, might be good too, like Sherlock Holmes. Addressing the depression itself, one book I would recommend is Feeling Good, by David Burns. It deals with errors in thinking that lead to feelings of depression and despair. It's not a substitute for therapy or medication, but it could be helpful.

What translator should I get?

>Some humorous lit would be good,
lmao or it might only fuck him up further

I was in the same boat as you op. Some points that got me through:
>clinical depression is a very loose term and is almost always misdiagnosed, the chance of an unavoidable "disorder" is almost zero
>depression is a state of mind
>read whatever the fuck you want, preferably something engaging or thought provoking. Enjoyment is secondary
>get off whatever you have been described slowly, make sure your doc knows you want to get off them and shave your dose down

Relating to your question, I read a good deal of philosophy but it might make you want to kill yourself.

Ignore everything but my post.

Siddartha, by Hesse.

files.libertyfund.org/files/297/Smiles_0379.pdf

start with the greeks

Laughter is good medicine. But yes I wouldn't recommend something dark like Catch-22.

>tfw go to psychologist to see wtf is wrong with me
>tell him I often feel sad and know this is not normal
>say "Hit me with the news doc"
>doc hits me with the news: "Son you are Majorly Depressed"
>mfw

honestly for a long time this was genuinely how i imagined americans talked 24/7

Oh not that, I just meant that if his depression is related to anxiety, humor may just worsen it overtime due to it's anaesthetic properties. (in my personal experience) Though in hindsight, even if that's true (and that question would actually make for a great debate), it's probably better only as something to be kept in mind, and not understood as advice to stay away from humor completely.
I sure af wouldn't take that advice myself

Depression definitely isn't a meme OP, but the idea that you can cure it definitely is. You've got this shit for life buddy.

I would define depression as an habitual disorder of the nervous system such that the normal causes of pleasure no longer function.

It's different to despair, because despair is a lack of hope or the notion that some task, or life in general, is fruitless or purposeless.

Physiological depression can exist in someone full of hope, and despair can exist in someone who is healthy in body.

The key thing about depression is that you no longer experience any pleasure in normal things. You no longer get any pleasure from eating, sleeping, walking, seeing a friend, talking to others. This results in constant tiredness and a great movement of the will to do even the simplest tasks. People don't know how much small pleasures sustain their lives until those little pleasures are taken away.

In my opinion, the key is to not put much stress on your thoughts and emotions, to rest until your body heals itself. If you try to "think positively", do exercise, study, work, you will probably just exhaust your already exhausted nervous system and exacerbate your symptoms. You wouldn't tell a man with a broken arm to lift weights, or a man with broken legs to walk; similarly, a man truly depressed shouldn't be told to lift up his thoughts and emotions, as it will only cause him pain. The key is to numb yourself, not to think or feel, until your body heals. Don't put any pressure on yourself. You should treat yourself like a sick person confined to his bed, because that's essentially what you are, and you shouldn't pretend you are normal and can function normally, as you will only hurt yourself like a man with flu trying to go for a jog.

The greatest thing that depressed people suffer from is lack of sympathy.

I remember that nobody was sympathetic to me during the few years I was struggling hard with depression, but as soon as it turned out I had a tumour on my brain I had instant sympathy. This is because people don't understand mental illness, they think it is a defect of character, they think it's because your lazy, proud, or self-centred. My depression was a thousand times more difficult and gruelling than having to sit in hospital for a while and have an operation on my brain, but a tumour is something physical that they can touch, and so something they can understand.

This lack of sympathy can result in extreme loneliness, which depressed people are already naturally prone to, because they don't have the energy to enjoy social situations.

There is a difference between depression and a character flaw, whether it be sloth or pride. Depression has been known about for thousands of years. A hundred years ago it was called neurasthenia, and before that it was called melancholy or melancholia. The are passages in the Bible that describe depression (Job Chapter 33, certain Psalms). It's called a mental illness, but it has a physical cause in the nervous system.

In my experience reading, especially philosophy and the like, makes things worse. My advice is not to get caught up into ideological trappings and just live a simple healthy life with some innocent entertainment if you have to.

If you do have to read, I'd at least get into lads who show how being upset over ideology is silly. Lads like Epicurus, Pyrrho, Zhuangzi, Hume, Stirner, Wittgenstein, U.G. Krishnamurti et cetera.

You probably need to realise that there is nothing wrong with not having a job as well.

I don't know if books will help depression that isn't existential.

Of Human Bondage is my favorite book.

Fuck Feelings by Bennett and Bennett

I know self-help books that are technically from the self-help genre are disapproved here, and for good reason, but this one is like the anti-self-help self-help book.

"Depression is war. You can die from it, live in its shadow, or be thankful for the experience."

-Jonathan sprout

What books do help existential depression

Books
Ego and Archetype, Edward Edinger (Jungian, not scientific, very Veeky Forums angle on depression and psych and general)
Change your Thinking, Sarah Edelman (Modern easy-mode self-help CBT book based on current research)

Psyc topics:
Learned helplessness
Behavioural activation
Mindfulness

Medical approach:
sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006295215001562)
BDNF model for treating depression
Chronic stress, diathesis-stress model, dendritic spine density/neuroplasticity, relating to ^
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_susceptibility_hypothesis

Disregard all these idiots recommending Nietzsche and wanky self-help books, what you need is some easy reading escapism and an excuse to get out the house on a regular basis.

Go to your local bookshop and head to the fantasy/science fiction section. Pick one of the various mammoth series you find there and have a flick through it, decide if you get on with the writing style. Buy the first book, go home, read it. As its fantasy/sf it'll probably only take you a day or two to read. Once done you'll be desperate to know what happens next however bad the book is, so you'll be motivated to go out and get the sequel. Rinse and repeat until you're too ashamed to be in the same room as the shameful stack of wheel of time novels by your bedside.

Get out of here with your worthless platitudes poison frog. So many 'depressed' people get sympathy. Mental illness is in now.

If you have honest to god clinical depression then don't you just need to up your meds?

I highly recommend you read and put in practice ideas from Epictetus' Discourses. It's a hard read, but it may help you deal with some of what you're going through. Depression and misery come from trying to control shit we don't have control over. The Stoics seek to align the will only with what one has control over, so anything you will virtually always comes true, and things you don't will are met indifferently, through a sense of duty (with more nuanced ideas on things like friendship of course).

Helps with what to do when the world is spinning wildly out of your control.