Decoding Persistent Depression: Book Three - Strategies and Tactics provides an in-depth, graduate school level examination of how and why long-term depression can rise and remain. Those with chronic depression can be the kindest, most compassionate, accommodating, humorous, attentive, reliable people who experience symptoms when their well-intentioned efforts fail. They can feel powerless, frustrated, and overwhelmed after patiently and hopefully waiting for stubborn others to improve their behavior or for a situation outside of their control to change. This book explores how psychological symptoms are comparable to biological ones that aid survival and thriving. It explains how depression can be more than just a result of a genetic, biochemical, or social cause, as it can be learned, personality-based, and purposeful, a psychological counterpart to the body's protective biological immune system. A detailed investigation illustrates how people unconsciously employ symptomatic strategies and tactics to protect their self-esteem, status, acceptance, and life style by avoiding or minimizing the risk of ridicule, rejection, failure, and abandonment. Understanding how painful symptoms can be functional may illuminate why depression persists as well as what's necessary to reduce it.