Bruce Levine Blog

Can Voters and Nonvoters Battling Against Despair Respect Each Other?

October 20th, 2008

There is a faction of Americans who believe that it is their civic duty to vote, and there is another faction who believe it is their civic duty to reject the pseudo-democratic voting ritual, and these two groups routinely engage in mutual mocking of one another. However, I have found that within both groups there […]

Thinking Critically About Scientology, Psychiatry, and Their Feud

September 10th, 2008

For many Americans who gain their information solely from television, all critics of psychiatry are Scientologists, exemplified by Tom Cruise spewing at Matt Lauer, “You don’t know the history of psychiatry. . . . Matt, you’re so glib.” The mass media has been highly successful in convincing Americans to associate criticism of psychiatry with anti-drug […]

Lost Common Sense about Depression: Relationships

August 13th, 2008

Both research and experience have long informed mental health professionals of a strong link between depression and relationship dissatisfaction. So why is psychiatry losing that awareness? One major reason is the disappearance in psychiatry of psychotherapy (talk therapy), in which it becomes obvious just how important our significant relationships are to our mental health. According […]

Depressed Lawyers: A Little Help For My Friends

July 24th, 2008

Among the lawyers whom I have known, it occurs to me that the only ones I’ve liked have had bouts of depression. So when Dan Lukasik, lawyer and depression sufferer, invited me to write a piece for his lawyerswithdepression.com, I gladly agreed. In Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic, I explain how depression is neither a character […]

A Blue Ohio: Democrats and the Blue-Collar Blues

December 13th, 2007

I have been a clinical psychologist in private practice for more than two decades in southwestern Ohio, a Republican stronghold in the state that broke Democrats’ hearts in 2004. Three years later, it appears that most of the “blue team” remembers Ohio only for voter fraud, but I remember how Democratic candidate John Kerry failed […]

Why I Don’t “Disease” Depression

November 27th, 2007

If forced to choose between labeling immobilizing depression as either a character weakness or a disease, it’s understandable that disease would be the preference. But there is a third choice, one that normalizes depression and which — for people such as myself — feels more respectful and better reduces suffering. I regularly do battle with […]