RESOURCES

There are many good sources of information available on mental health, eating disorders, and alcohol consumption. I offer a combination of straightforward self-help resources and more personal stories. A few that I recommend:

EATING

Overcoming Binge Eating by Christopher Fairburn

This is a step-by-step self-help guide to dealing with binge eating by one of the leading researchers in the field. Fairburn’s prescriptions are based on sound research on what helps people overcome binge eating.

Binge No More: Your Guide to Overcoming Disordered Eating by Joyce Nash

This practical handbook is divided into five sections. Topics include defining binge eating, its potential harm, and its biological and societal causes; how to assess and alter binge patterns; how to change the thoughts that fuel those patterns; the role of medication; and advice on when to consider therapy or other professional help.

Overcoming Overeating by Jane R. Hirschmann and Carol H. Munter

An excellent, straightforward guide to overcoming the diet/binge cycle.

It’s Not about Food: Change Your Mind; Change Your Life; End Your Obsession with Food and Weight by Carol Emery Normandi

Starting with the assumption that weight problems are as much emotional as physical, this book teaches techniques for becoming attuned to the body, setting personal limits, and understanding what is emotional—and not physical—hunger.

The National Eating Disorders Association (www.nationaleatingdisorders.org) The organization can provide you with information on binge eating and other eating disorders, as well as referrals, support groups and hotlines, conferences and newsletters.

Mirror-Mirror (www.mirror-mirror.org)

This is a useful resource for individuals and loved ones on the way to recovery—providing a useful list of symptoms and relapse warning signs.

Memoirs and a Novel

Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia by Marya Hornbacher

A haunting memoir from a young woman who suffered severe anorexia and bulimia.

Hunger Point by Jillian Medoff

This novel tells the story of two sisters battling eating disorders with humor and insight.

Stick Figure: A Diary of My Former Self by Lori Gottlieb

After finding the diary she kept when she was eleven years old, Gottlieb wrote this moving chronicle of her childhood struggle with anorexia.

DRINKING

Responsible Drinking: A Moderation Management Approach for Problem Drinkers by Fredrick Rotgers, Mark F. Kern, and Rudy Hoetzel

The tips in this book are based on a model of intervention for alcohol problems that has significant support. The book includes many case studies and exercises to help readers identify their triggers for drinking and develop alternative lifestyles.

Controlling Your Drinking: Tools to Make Moderation Work for You by William R. Miller

Clear, concise, non-judgmental, and practical, this book lays out techniques for moderation and self-discovery.

Moderation Management (www.moderation.org)

This is a behavioral change program and national support network providing a mutual help environment that encourages people who are concerned about their drinking to take action to cut back or quit drinking before the problems become severe.

Addiction Alternatives (www.addictionalternatives.com)

Espousing a philosophy of self-empowerment, based on therapist Marc Kern’s research, this site provides further reading, free consultation, and information on support groups and resources around the country.

Alcoholics Anonymous (www.alcoholics-anonymous.org)

This well-known organization provides support and meetings around the world.

Memoirs

Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp

A wrenching account of Knapp’s struggles with alcoholism, eating disorders, and depression. Her symptoms are much more severe than many readers’, but the co-occurrence of alcohol problems, eating disorders, and depression in this writer shows how the toxic triangle develops and perpetuates itself in women.

Smashed: Story of a Drunken Girlhood by Koren Zalickas

Zalickas is an insightful and graceful writer whose memoir addresses the danger of alcohol dependence in girls and young women.

Happy Hours: Alcohol in a Woman’s Life by Devin Jersild

A readable, personal treatment of women’s relationship to alcohol, this book is filled with stories from women and sound advice about women’s particular vulnerabilities—both social and physical—to alcohol.

DEPRESSION

Silencing the Self by Dana Crowley Jack

This breakthrough book describes how women’s excessive concern with pleasing others and maintaining relationships leads them to sacrifice their own needs for the sake of their relationships.

Women and Depression by M. Sara Rosenthal

A straightforward guide by a medical health journalist, this book explains some of the theories of depression and describes the available treatments.

The Deepest Blue: How Women Face and Overcome Depression by Lauren Dockett

This work is a collection of stories about thirty women of all ages and backgrounds who are experiencing, or have recovered from, depression.

American Psychological Association (www.psych.org) and the Association for the Advancement of Behavioral Therapy (www.aabt.org)

These are both great resources if you feel you need to consult a psychiatrist or a psychologist but you don’t know how to find one. Both of these Web sites also have information about depression, anxiety, and other mental health issues.

Memoirs

Speaking of Sadness: Depression, Disconnection, and the Meanings of Illness by David A. Karp

Karp uses his own experiences with battling depression to address the psychological, chemical, and social implications of the disease—and to give possible solutions.

You Are Not Alone: Words of Experience and Hope from the Journey through Depression by Julia Thorne

A valuable resource in combating the isolation that depression sufferers often feel, this book collects the reminiscences and support tips of both patients and doctors who have dealt with depression.

The Beast: A Journey through Depression by Tracy Thompson

Journalist Thompson chronicles her lifelong battle with depression in this frank, affecting memoir.

MEDITATION

Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn

This national bestseller provides hundreds of exercises for using meditation techniques in everyday life to become more calm, centered, and aware of your surroundings. It is written by one of the leading teachers of meditation techniques for psychotherapy purposes.

Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn

Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn developed a program of therapy using meditation techniques to help patients facing severe stress, physical pain, and medical illness. The program is the basis for several of the strategies suggested in Eating, Drinking, Overthinking.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse by Zindel V. Segal, J. Mark G. Williams, and John Teasdale

This book outlines a new program of therapy for people with recurrent depressions that combines meditation techniques with cognitive therapy. This mindfulness-based approach has been shown to help in preventing relapse into depression, and is the basis for several of the techniques described in Eating, Drinking, Overthinking.

Calming Your Anxious Mind: How Mindfulness and Compassion Can Free You from Anxiety, Fear, and Panic by Jeffrey Brantley

This book proposes techniques of mindfulness to relieve a wide range of stress-related conditions and to help develop skills for calming and relaxing the mind and body.

The Tao of Sobriety: Helping You to Recover from Alcohol and Drug Addiction by David Gregson, Jay S. Efran, and G. Alan Marlatt

This workbook provides exercises that combine meditation techniques with more traditional psychotherapy techniques to help people overcome alcohol and drug addiction.

YOUNG WOMEN AND THE TOXIC TRIANGLE

Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher

This classic book tells the stories of several adolescent girls that therapist Mary Pipher treated for eating disorders, depression, and drug abuse. Pipher makes persuasive arguments about how the cultural message girls receive in early adolescence sets them up for the toxic triangle.

Girl in the Mirror: Mothers and Daughters in the Years of Adolescence by Nancy L. Snyderman and Peg Streep

The authors offer tools for building openness, trust, and respect in adolescent daughters, along with specific guides to dealing with difficult situations and handling change. This is a wonderful resource for mothers.

Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence by Rosalind Wiseman

This book offers parents a guide to the often-mysterious world of adolescence. Casting herself as a translator of “Girl World,” Wiseman helps parents understand their daughters’ social lives, insecurities, and challenges.

The Young Women’s Health Page (onsu.edu/library/teenhealth)

This user-friendly site provides information and resources for young women’s mental and physical health issues.

Adios Barbie (www.adiosbarbie.com)

Devoted to promoting self-esteem and a good body image by protesting negative and distorted images of women in the media, this site provides an interactive forum for young women to discuss weight-related pressures and vulnerabilities.

Memoir

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg

This story of one girl’s struggle with depression is touching and sympathetic—a great resource for a young woman.