Being depressed and suicidal doesn’t mean wanting to kill yourself every moment of every day. It may be a fixed obsession, but sometimes it gets relegated to the back of your head. Rather, it means...

It is a fact that one man can be deliriously happy in the exact situation that causes another man to wither from depression.

I found that dance was key to keeping depression out of my life. When you dance, things just go away, things don’t seem so bad. There’s no better way to take care of health than...

You have a history of starving yourself,” he says gently.I lift my head. I meet his gaze. “I have a history that I don’t like to talk about.

Finding your “self-culture” is hero’s work. I liken it to the journey of a warrior who is preparing for battle. There is no violence in the battle, but there is a plan of attack and...

I told Doreen I would not go to the show or the luncheon or the film premiere, but that I would not go to Coney Island either, I would stay in bed. Then I wondered...

Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction It is already happening to some extent in our own...

In this cold land, there is a little hope for anyone. But is this right, God? I’m just trying to be a better man! Trying to save lives! But is this right award for? I...

An observant friend will recognize the signs of the rise of grief: eyes that easily well with tears, a smile that is difficult to sustain, a tendency to withdraw. And ultimately, perhaps we each need...

The hardest thing about depression is that it is addictive. It begins to feel uncomfortable not to be depressed. You feel guilty for feeling happy.

The bigness of the world is redemption. Despair compresses you into a small space, and a depression is literally a hollow in the ground. To dig deeper into the self, to go underground, is sometimes...

You know when you send a text message to someone and you don’t get a response right away, you feel depressed? You send a text message to someone you really like and you get a...

I find it easy to spot a depressive. The illness is scrawled across them like graffiti.

depression in its major stages possesses no quickly available remedy: failure of alleviation is one of the most distressing factors of the disorder as it reveals itself to the victim, and one that helps situate...

And with that, I’m going to crawl into bed and try to erase all that has happened today.

I walked to Mairangi Bay beach, day after day, seeking companionship in the roar of the ocean, and contemplating the shipwreck of my life. There, in that isolated wilderness, amidst the screaming gulls, and consistent...

He stepped off the pavement like a man jumping off a bridge, as calm as a swimmer with an ocean out below. Lucy had known what he was going to do the instant their eyes...

The world always seems like it’s going to hell when you’re depressed. And, of course, it always is going to hell in some way. That’s what makes it so hard to tell the difference between...

Mild depression is a gradual and sometimes permanent thing that undermines people the way rust weakens iron. It is too much grief at too slight a cause, pain that takes over from the other emotions...

I believe that it may be normal, healthy, and even productive to experience mild to moderate depression from time to time as part of the variable emotional spectrum, either as an appropriate response to situations...

Depression is boring, I thinkand I would do better to makesome soup and light up the cave.

Last time I talked to her she didn’t sound like herself. She’s depressed. It’s awful what happens when people run out of money. They start thinking they’re no good.

I tried to pick the burned ones from the bowl but I didn’t get many of them because I didn’t make much of an effort, and even though I was taking the burned ones out...

By the time it has gotten dressed, it has become he; has become already more or less George — though still not the whole George they demand and are prepared to recognize. Those who call...

I was so self-critical. I still am; but it’s not as bad anymore.

I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk, too, before others quite reasonably, and it looks as if I felt, too, God knows how well within my skin. Yet the soul maintains its...

In my case, I was not frightened in the least bit at the thought that I might live because I was certain, quite certain, that I was already dead.

I’m haunted. We all are, I guess. We’re parentless, friendless, unloved, abandoned. The spirits of our deceased emotional anchors and proofs of existence will follow and demean us until we too roam a quiet lifeless...

Even when the sun was shining she couldn’t see it. The whole house was closing in on her and she was suffocating.

The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems...

I think maybe, when I was very young, I witnessed a chaste cheek kiss between the two when it was impossible to avoid. Christmas, birthdays. Dry lips. On their best married days, their communications were...

To believe that will has power over potentiality, that the passage to actuality is the result of a decision that puts an end to the ambiguity of potentiality (which is always potentiality to do and...

I may be drunk by morning but that will not do any good. I shall take the train to Paris anyway. The train will be the same, the people, struggling for comfort and, even, dignity...

She was supposed to be happy… why couldn’t she just be happy for a few moments? Why couldn’t she just forget everything bad going on her life, and just be happy?

…depressive realism. Depression is not the near death experience described by so many, [Kayla Dunn] suggests, but a rebirth in which the new psyche has removed self-delusion. Compared with so-called healthy individuals, depressives are more...

So ask me if I am alright.’I’m fine; I’m always fine.’You see this look in my eyes.’No, I’m fine. I am always fine.’There is a corpse behind my smile.’Listen, I am fine. Always, always fine...

The number I had for her didn’t work. But in this depression, could you blame it?

The feeling of the wind, the sound of rushing water, the sense of sunlight breaking through the clouds, the colors of flowers as the seasons changed – everything around him felt changed, as if they...

There was a lot of pain in that kiss. There was so much hurt and so much fear in it. I felt tears rolling down the both of our faces. But, in that kiss, there...

Oh she’s alright it’s just that – I don’t want to get mixed up with anyone in the house. I don’t want to get mixed up at all with anybody anymore.

My greatest urge in life is to do nothing. It’s not even an absence of motivation, a lack, for I do have a strong urge: to do nothing. To down tools, to stop. Except I...

Exercise is not an instant cure, but you need to get your brain working again, and if you move your body your brain won’t have any choice.

Two and a half years ago I’d learned to stop wanting comfort from the people around me, because they couldn’t give it. We were all too scared. I was terrified and so were they. No...

I’m trying to let him know what I’m about to do.I’m hoping he can save me, even though I realize he can’t.

He felt the guilt of inaction, of simply waiting while his life went to waste. No one was worth the gift of his life, no one could possibly be worth that. It belonged to him...

I waste at least an hour every day lying in bed. Then I waste time pacing. I waste time thinking. I waste time being quiet and not saying anything because I’m afraid I’ll stutter.

We are far, far stronger than our pain

I cry a lot. My emotions are very close to my surface. I don’t want to hold anything in so it festers and turns into pus – a pustule of emotion that explodes into a...

For so many years, I couldn’t understand why every time I thought that someone finally loved me, like… for real, they would eventually turn to vapor. Every person whom I’ve ever loved is trapped inside...

Time’ is the most threatening four letter word.