The Ghost in the House will ring true for every mother who has struggled with depression, whether postpartum or other. It would also serve as a great resource for those who know or live with someone with depression.

Tracy Thompson pulls together and seamlessly blends her own experience as a mother who struggles with depression, the stories she gleaned from thousands of mothers who responded to her plea for women to share their experiences and hard scientific evidence about this illness and its impact on mothers who struggle with it and their families.

Far from being "depressing", this book gives hope by helping the reader understand the interplay of nature and nurture as well as a variety of insights on some of the solutions and strategies that have worked for others. Depression is a complex physiological illness that defies simplistic or pat answers and is further complicated by a mother's concerns about the impact of her illness on her children and on their psychological futures. Tracy Thompson encompasses all of this in The Ghost in the House.

I've only written a couple other reviews on Amazon, but this book compelled me to do so.

I'm really not sure which book Publishers Weekly was reading, but it couldn't have been this one! Instead focus on Library Journal who, in my opinion, got it right. As a clinical social worker, who has worked with hundreds of mothers, this is a book I recommend to clients as well as mental health professionals. Thompson's ability to explain complicated -medical/physiological/pharmacological- information while simultaneously using commonly understood language,without watering down the information one iota, is a true gift. The stories Thompson shares from her own experience as a mother struggling with depression, in adddition to the compelling interviews she has conducted with hundreds of mothers(all backed by excellent research relating what is happening currently in the field of depression) set this book apart making it a one stop resource.
As strange as it may sound, this book is an enjoyable read, even though it is tackling a very serious subject; maternal depression. I know! Enjoyable and maternal depression does appear to be incongruous in the same sentence. However Thompson's way with the written word just doesn't come along very often in this genre. Most of the books written about depression are heavily technical or written like a "how to" manual. Thompson has found, as Dave Matthews would sing, "The Space Between".