Year: 2013

Today I am honored to be on Deborah Serani’s blog tour stop for her book Depression and your Child.

Title: Depression and Your Child: A Guide for Parents and Caregivers
Genre: Self-Help, Parenting
Author: Deborah Serani
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (September 16, 2013)
Pages: 242
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1442221453
ISBN-13: 978-1442221451

Seeing your child suffer in any way is a harrowing experience for any parent. Mental illness in children can be particularly draining due to the mystery surrounding it, and the issue of diagnosis at such a tender age. Depression and Your Child gives parents and caregivers a uniquely textured understanding of pediatric depression, its causes, its symptoms, and its treatments. Author Deborah Serani weaves her own personal experiences of being a depressed child along with her clinical experiences as a psychologist treating depressed children.
Current research, treatments and trends are presented in easy to understand language and tough subjects like self-harm, suicide and recovery plans are addressed with supportive direction. Parents will learn tips on how to discipline a depressed child, what to expect from traditional treatments like psychotherapy and medication, how to use holistic methods to address depression, how to avoid caregiver burnout, and how to move through the trauma of diagnosis and plan for the future.

Real life cases highlight the issues addressed in each chapter and resources and a glossary help to further understanding for those seeking additional information. Parents and caregivers are sure to find here a reassuring approach to childhood depression that highlights the needs of the child even while it emphasizes the need for caregivers to care for themselves and other family members as well.

Purchase your copy at AMAZONor at Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group.

About the Author:

Dr. Deborah Serani is a go-to media expert on a variety of psychological issues. Her interviews can be found in ABC News, Newsday, Womens Health & Fitness, The Chicago Tribune, The Associated Press, and affiliate radio station programs at CBSand NPR, just to name a few. She is a ShareCare Expert for Dr. Oz, writes for Psychology Today, helms the “Ask the Therapist” column for Esperanza Magazine and has worked as a technical advisor for the NBC television show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. A licensed psychologist in practice over twenty years, Serani is also an adjunct professor at Adelphi University teaching courses in clinical disorders and treatment and is the author of the award-winning book “Living with Depression.”

Her latest book is Depression and Your Child: A Guide for Parents and Caregivers.

Visit her website at www.drdeborahserani.com.

Excerpt:

When you held your child for the very first time, you were likely brimming with pride and joy. Your heart swelling with enormous love, you’re swept away with streams of thoughts for what your child needs in this immediate moment—as well as plans and dreams for the future. You expect there to be wondrous adventures your child will experience, as well as bumps in the road along the way.

And that’s okay, you say, because you know that life isn’t always an easy journey.

But one thing you probably never considered was how an illness like depression could take hold of your child. And why would you? Up until recently, it was never believed that children could experience depression. Long ago, studies suggested that children and teenagers didn’t have the emotional capacity or cognitive development to experience the hopelessness and helplessness of depression.

Today, we know that children, even babies, experience depression. The clinical term is called pediatric depression, and rates are higher now than ever before. In the United States alone, evidence suggests that 4 percent of preschool-aged children, 5 percent of school-aged children, and 11 percent of adolescents meet the criteria for major depression.

Depression and Your Child grew out of my experience of being a clinician who specializes in the treatment of pediatric depression. I wanted to write a parenting book to raise awareness about depressive disorders in children, to teach parents how to find treatment, to offer tips for creating a healthy living environment, and to highlight important adult parenting matters such as self-care, romance, and well-being.

I also wrote this book because I have lived with depression since I was a child. As is the case with pediatric depression, my own depression didn’t hit with lightning-like speed. It was more of a slow burn, taking its toll in gnaws and bites before hollowing me out completely. After a suicide attempt as a college sophomore, I found help that finally reduced my depression. Until then, I accepted the sadness, despair, and overwhelming fatigue as the way my life just was. I never realized, nor did my parents or any other adults, that I had a clinical disorder. I’ve since turned the wounds from my childhood into wisdom and believe that sharing the textures of my experiences will help parents realize what their own depressed child is going through.

More than anything else, I want this book to offer hope. As a clinician, proper diagnosis and treatment can be life-changing and life saving. As a person living with depression, I have found successful ways to lead a full and meaningful life. I want parents and children who struggle with depression to feel this hope, too—and in these pages, that’s what you’ll find.

ABOUT FROM MY HEART TO YOURS

ABOUT MICHELLE ZARRIN

Michelle Zarrin is an author, blogger and entrepreneur, running two businesses. Having meditated over 2000 hours in the past four years, her expertise is the internal world through the tool of the breath. Inspiration, creativity, tranquility, intuition and compassion all reside within our internal world. Her blogs consist of her writings on life and spirituality. She lives in Orange County, California.

You can visit her at www.MichelleZarrin.com

From My Heart to Yours Virtual Book Publicity Tour Schedule

Why Blogging is Important

We are living the frenetic pace of the technological era. Families do not have time to make dinner from scratch every night. Farmers do not have time to go through the natural process of a harvest. The notion of patiently waiting to see results is slipping through our fingertips like sand drifting off into the wind. In a time when bullet points are much appreciated, I believe blogs are the up and coming reading tool.

We have become so accustomed to reading articles online and finding our answers through brief synopses, it makes me wonder if through time we will lose the patience of holding a story with over 200 pages of words, sentences and paragraphs? Being an author, I like to think that books will not become obsolete one day. I even like to hold a physical novel in my hands and turn the pages. But walking through many airports with an observant eye has shown me that perhaps I am on my way to becoming ‘old fashioned.’ For people are no longer holding books as they sit in the terminal waiting to embark on their flight. A plethora of laptops, tablets and smart phones have taken the place of books. Is it possible people are reading books on these devices? Yes, it is. But I still believe blogs are a necessary part of our culture. If you have a business, product or opinion to market, by writing blogs, people get to know you.

In the technological era that we live in, blogs are a mode of expression, a connection to the world at large. With that said, my correspondence to the world has also continued through blogs. After my book, “From My Heart to Yours: Based on a True Story” was published, the natural next step in my writing was to write blogs. My book was inspired by my own life. You follow the character through love, loss, life and death. In the end, she realizes we are all here to learn lessons. The art of life is how we deal with our struggles. And I continue to share the many life lessons and my path of spirituality linking me to the internal world on my website, MichelleZarrin.com.

ABOUT THE ALCHEMIST AGENDA

ABOUT MARTY WEISS

Marty Weiss was born and raised in Chicago and decided that he wanted to make movies after spending a summer working on the set of John Hughes’ movie “Sixteen Candles.” After earning a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and an M.F.A. in film and television from New York University, he directed national and international TV commercials for major Blue Chip brands as well as TV movies. He helmed his first feature film, “Vampires: The Turning,” for Sony/Screen Gems Entertainment – an action/horror movie that evolved out of John Carpenter’s “Vampires.” It was filmed in Chiang Mai, Thailand and released worldwide in 2005. Weiss has filmed throughout North and South America, Eastern and Western Europe, and Southeast Asia, and has garnered numerous industry awards. His screen adaption of his debut novel, “The Alchemist Agenda,” was the honored with the Best Screenplay award from Amazon Studios and is currently on their development slate for production. Weiss lives in Los Angeles with his wife Elisabeth and children Jasmine and Jake.

Visit his blog at http://www.martinishotfilms.tv

Chickens, Eggs, and Options…

The Alchemist Agenda was conceived nearly five years ago, though it was just recently hatched. Its long gestation was not only the result of a slow author, but rather a fast changing environment that is transforming how we produce and receive content in the digital age.

I am a filmmaker and had first imagined The Alchemist Agenda as a movie. I wanted to set the action and romance in visually striking locations that I had filmed in and wanted to return to, envisioning a big budget tent-pole franchise with ongoing adventures in the vein of Jason Bourne or James Bond.

But the harsh reality of how difficult it is to get something of that scope made these days set in. Movie studios are making fewer and fewer movies every year, and nearly all of the big ones are based on pre-existing material with built-in audiences such as graphic novels, (Batman, Iron Man, Spiderman), novels (Hunger Games, World War Z), TV shows (Star Trek), theme parks (Pirates of the Caribbean), even video games (Resident Evil). And since I can’t draw, design a video game, or build a ride, the novel was my only option. All I’d have to do was write one (something I had never done), then find someone to publish it, market it, and sell a few million copies (something I had no idea how to do).

But I didn’t worry about such things. I had written several screenplays, short stories, and articles, and I was excited and challenged by the prospect of my first book; the bigger canvas would allow me to delve deeper into the story’s characters and plot complexities. And so I went to town.

It ultimately proved to be an amazing experience, the writing that is, until I had to face the harsh realities of distribution once again: I had no idea what to do with a book, where to take it, or how to shop it—so I stuffed it in my desk drawer and forgot about it. Sort of.

I still couldn’t stop thinking that it would make a great movie. So I sent the screenplay version to Amazon Studios, Amazon’s new film and TV division, and they optioned it (which means that they pay for the rights to develop and make the movie). Over the next two years, I worked with them on several rewrites, and even produced a feature length motion comic for their unique development process. And because of the publicity the project received, a publisher contacted me to suggest that it would make a terrific novel. I told him that I would get right on it, and emailed him the manuscript five minutes later. Sometimes timing is everything.

More than ever, people like having choices in how they digest their entertainment, to read, listen, or watch; Cineplex or stage; print or pad; comic book or animated; audio book or large print; 3D or live. Storytellers now have options to create and distribute content like never before. Music software allows people who can’t play an instrument to produce songs. Camera and editing equipment make filmmaking affordable. And books can be self-published. The Internet opens the doors to the world. This democratization of content, however, does make it harder than ever to find a mass audience – and more likely to become a lost needle in an ever expanding haystack.

A former screenwriting teacher once said that it’s better to bring great meaning to one person, than to leave the masses empty. That sentiment stuck with me. But still, the old belief that size does matter came to mind in two obvious ways. One, the bigger your audience, the more money you make. And two, the bigger your… Actually, I can’t say number two in mixed company, but I think it was that same screenwriting teacher who also said that a character who acquires a lot of money in your story can get the girl in lieu of number two, and vice versa.

I don’t know if it matters what comes first – money or sex, novel or screenplay, chicken or egg – but I do believe that it’s always good to have options.