Keith, You talk about "dense material". That description alone of what you think of the text you are working with would be a trigger for depression. Rather than calling the material dense try challenging, interesting, new, eye opening. (it may not be that yet but it can be).
I think you would have a similar problem no matter how you approach your reading if you feel the material is dense. I agree brain overwhelm is one of the things that lead to depression.
Which is why it pays to organise your thinking and reading. Consider shorter blocks of time spaced with some light reading. Comics perhaps.
Allow it to incubate. While you can PhotoRead and activate almost immediately for text that you find new, that takes a lot of thinking to learn I suggest PhotoReading it daily for a week or more without activating it. See how you go with that.
Above all change the self talk. If you expect the text to be hard, difficult, overwhelming or dense. It will match your expectations. If you can think of it as fun, now I get it, interesting, curious then again you'll find it matches your expectation.
Relax, be playful with it. Apply the beginner mind. Be like an explorer then the text need not overwhelm you.
Alex
