Getting Unstuck

Getting Unstuck is a groundbreaking first-look at "stuckness"-the profound inability to move oners"s life forward. Being stuck is a mental health problem that affects thousands of adults; and yet, it has gone unrecognized and misunderstood by mental health professionals, until now. The author, psychiatrist Don Kerson, argues that adults who are stuck are bedeviled by a complex interaction between depression, attention deficit disorder and dissociation, a consequence of childhood trauma. People who are stuck canrs"t get things done, no matter how smart, skilled, articulate or creative they may be. Their personal and professional lives are often on shaky ground, and depression is a constant problem. Therapy helps, sometimes. Anti-depressants help, sometimes. But they never really feel good. They remain stuck, Kerson argues, because the problem-if recognized at all-is being treated only partially. The key to getting people unstuck is to tease apart the depression, ADD, and dissociation (or whichever of these conditions is present at any one time), and then to address each of them separately. Kerson wrote Getting Unstuck to help people with this problem to lead more productive and satisfying lives and to share what hers"s discovered with mental health professionals so they can begin to recognize the problem and offer effective treatment for it. Kerson details the successful and efficient method he developed to help his patients get their lives moving again. It includes the innovative use of neo-Ericksonian hypnotherapeutic integration exercises to address the procrastination and disorganization that plague individuals with ADD.

Don Kerson, M.D. has practiced outpatient psychopharmacology and psychotherapy for over 20 years in Manhattan and at Greenpoint Psychiatric Services, the clinic he founded in Brooklyn, New York. Until 2000, he was Medical Director of the Long Island Consultation Center, the fourth largest freestanding mental health and substance abuse clinic in New York State. Dr. Kerson is currently developing a group therapy program that uses an integrated approach to help participants get back to fully enjoying life, seminar for young adults on using their right brain and a seminar for adults in which he will teach the trance skills he discusses in Getting Unstuck.