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gothgirl420666 comments on Instrumental rationality/self help resources - Less Wrong Discussion
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Happiness (or anything else designed primarily to change your inner state)
Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy - David D. Burns
Absolutely fantastic. The concepts are highly rational and compatible with a LessWrong worldview and are explained very well. The guy writes in a really friendly, likeable style. He does an excellent job arguing with the hypothetical depressed reader and logically convincing him that the beliefs he firmly holds are maladaptive and wrong, without expecting him to "just think more positively" or anything similar.
The principles explained in the book are those of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which is the only form of psychotherapy proven to work better than placebo. Essentially what CBT says (if I correctly understand it) is that depression essentially is a form of irrational thinking, specifically ten specific irrational thinking patterns, called "cognitive distortions". These include things like "overgeneralization", where a depressed person will do a small thing wrong and conclude that everything they do is wrong, or "mind reading", where a depressed person will insist that somebody hates them or is thinking negative things about them, without proof to back it up. The book explains how to notice and counter those biases in yourself.
Personally, I have been increasingly overcoming depression for maybe the past four years or so, and I read this book far too late when I was mostly all the way out of the pit. I would say my mood has improved a little in the three months since I read this book.
I would highly recommend this to anyone who is depressed at all, and I would mildly recommend this to anyone else.
Depending on what you mean by placebo. Talking to someone trained in most brands of therapy is no better than talking to the untrained, but it's a lot better than no therapy. Also, I think it has been demonstrated that reading this book about CBT is useful, though not as useful as talking to someone trained in CBT. Compared to talking to the untrained, I don't know.
Moodkit
This iPhone app is based on CBT. It has many features. But the most useful feature for me is something called "Thought Checker". Suppose in a certain situation you felt a surge of negative emotions. Then into the app you first describe the situation. Then you choose, from a large list, some of the emotions you experienced and rate their intensity. Then you describe the thoughts that ran through your head. You then select from a list of cognitive distortions, the distortions that would apply to the thoughts you just described. Then you write a new, clearer way to think about the same situation but without the distortions. Then finally your re-rate the intensity of the emotions you listed. Almost always it attenuates significantly.
I have found this to be an excellent way to defuse extreme emotions. For example, sometimes a single negative thought about my career or relationship status would ruin the productivity of an entire day for me. No longer. Repeated use might make the whole procedure automatic in your brain.
The other features are tips and advice to improve mood. You can commit to taking specific actions and check back. You can track your mood as a function of time. There are also journaling templates which are very handy. All in all, easily worth the $5 price tag. Drawback: you need an iPhone or iPad.
Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends On It - Kamal Ravikant
Essentially involves rewiring your brain by insisting to yourself that you love yourself. Got the author out of a depressed state where he hadn't left the house in months(?) even though it felt like bs when he first tried. Others have had similar success with it (note the high number of reviews).
Personally I appear to be naturally predisposed towards happiness; why I recommend the book is that it's the only thing I've heard of that seems to produce the same kinds of natural bursts of elation that I experience anyway.
The book is cheap and short, and the potential return is very high (if you're looking for stuff under the Happiness heading) so I would say that it's worth checking out.
Self-compassion. See here and here and links therein.
Self-compassion, as defined by Kristin Neff contains 3 main components: (1) Self-Kindness; (2) Common Humanity, i.e. recognizing that your troubles aren't that unique and that many people suffer/have suffered similar problems and (3) Mindfulness: mainly, seeing clearly and not-denying your current state as it is.
I think self-compassion based meditation has increased my happiness as I've always tended to be overly self-critical.