Dr. Tony Attwood's new book on Aspie depression

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Exploring Depression, and Beating the Blues: A CBT Self-Help Guide to Understanding and Coping with Depression in Asperger’s Syndrome [ASD-Level 1]

Attwood's still in the ballgame!

I wonder how depression in autistic people can differ from autistic burnout.

I bought it a couple of years ago when it was first published. At the time I was finally starting to accept the possibility that I might be autistic and that autism might be a contributory factor in my long term depression.

It starts off with a brief but useful introduction about Asperger's and depression, but the bulk of the book is taken up by a series of exercises in which you have to fill in the answers to questions and complete charts about how you are progressing.

For example there is a section entitled "Understanding the value of giving and receiving compliments". This section asks you to list compliments you have received about your abilities and aspects of your personality. You then have to describe how you felt about the compliments and the strength of your feelings. The book returns to this particular theme several times including a section where you have to give yourself complements as an antidote to low mood.

Other sections ask you to do things such as identifying qualities you admire in a family member and a fictional character.

Later there is a section on challenging negative thoughts. You are required to describe a recent situation that led to you feeling sad. The exercise asks you to list up to five negative emotions you felt at the time and rate them for their intensity on a scale of 1 to 10.

There are charts to fill in such as weekly planners, self monitoring and personal energy accounting. How on earth am I supposed to score all of my activities on a scale of 1 -100 (energy withdrawals or deposits depending on the activity) to come up with my energy budget?

I find these sort of exercises really difficult and frustrating. I often can't come up with any answers at all to the questions and usually really struggle to identify any emotions I am feeling. I have only managed to get through about a quarter of the exercises despite trying many times. I usually end up putting the book down and reading something about one of my interests instead.

Some people may well find the approach in the book useful but I found the exercises too difficult. I probably would not have bought it if I had been able to look through it first. I have actually found Tony Attwood's "Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome" far more useful in helping me to understand my problems and come up with my own strategies for coping with them.

Thank you for the review, Sandpiper. That all sounds like fairly standard CBT techniques.

If you are fairly alexithymic (i.e., you have trouble naming your emotions), it might be more effective working one to one with a therapist. They could observe your facial expression, body language, and so on, and say "you look sad" or "your body language is looking sort of anxious, is that what you are feeling?" Also doing one exercise a week and discussing it with the therapist might be more productive.

One distinct advantage of a book like this is that many places provide zero therapy for Asperger's alone, but most places offer therapy for depression. And a book like this might help a therapist who is not knowledgeable about autism provide those CBT approaches in an autism-friendly way.

Anyway, thank you for taking the trouble to write about it in such detail.