One good thing about New York is that most people function daily while in a low-grade depression. It’s not like if you’re in Los Angeles, where everyone’s so actively working on cheerfulness and mental and...

Most of the kids had been so mentally screwed by their parents they needed more than twelve weeks of wilderness. They needed reincarnation. To die and just come back as a grasshopper, as a fucking...

When psychologists Catherine Caldwell-Harris and Ayse Ayçiçegi compared U.S. and Turkish samples, they found that having “an orientation inconsistent with societal values” is a risk factor for poor mental health. The findings support what the...

I want you to trust yourself, baby. Love is all that matters and you’ve always known that. You’ve known, since you were a very little girl, what your life is meant to be about…

I feel like a paper cut just waiting to bleed.

The monsters were neverunder my bed.Because the monsterswere inside my head.I fear no monsters,for no monsters I see.Because all this timethe monster has been me.

Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression,...

When you are depressed you feel alone, and that no one is going through quite what you are going through. You are so scared of appearing in any way mad you internalise everything, and you...

It wasn’t that she was sad—sadness had very little to do with it, really, considering that most of the time, she felt close to nothing at all. Feeling required nerves, connections, sensory input. The only...

Larry: She doesn’t want to be happy.Dan: Everybody wants to be happy.Larry: Depressives don’t. They want to be unhappy to confirm they’re depressed. If they were happy they couldn’t be depressed anymore. They’d have to...

The mornings were the worst. Roger told me this was Classic Depressive. He said that mornings were generally the most trying part of the day for a Classic. As Roger spoke, I would think of...

I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.

When deep inside you feel frustrated and depressed, scream the silence, scream it so loud that you never hear it again.

They had to call and callAnd pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.–From the poem “Lady Lazarus”, written 23-29 October 1962

In addition to my other numerous acquaintances, I have one more intimate confidant… My depression is the most faithful mistress I have known — no wonder, then, that I return the love.

What would you do, when all hell is going to lose? Are you going to escape, and find a place to hide? Or are you going to stay, and hope for the best? What path...

Century after century, the belief that an individual’s physical health was independent of his or her emotional health has so dominated medical thought that there has even been open contempt for anyone who would dare...

I wish I weren’t me” over and over again just flat of the key of love until he forgot the words and could only hum along. Everyday was the same. The same stupid smile on...

When you told me I didn’t love youI simply thought how would you knowFor I remembered the spaces between your fingersAnd the crease between your eyesHow dare you tell meI never thought of you as...

She wuz depressed. Yeah, she wuz on stuff for it. Like me. Sometimes it jus’ takes you over. It’s an illness,” she said, although she made the words sound like “it’s uh nillness.”Nillness, thought Strike,...

It is two years since I emerged from depression and I no longer want myself dead. I want myself alive. I am no longer my own enemy. Depression is the enemy. The monster lives at...

There he must, despite the anguish devouring his brain, present a face approximating the one that is associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk, and be responsive to questions,...

Between death and hell a bridge shining silver wings offers his soul hope.

I’m still not able to sleep on her side of the bed” I faked a smile.

Serotonin, the “feel-good” brain chemical that is boosted by Prozac, depends on magnesium for its production and function.

I’m broken, but I have to learn how to live. I feel stuck together with scotch tape, like after any breath everything could come apart. If it does, if it all comes undone, I think...

Antonin Artaud wrote on one of his drawings, “Never real and always true,” and that is how depression feels. You know that it is not real, that you are someone else, and yet you know...

The most incredible architectureIs the architecture of Self,which is ever changing, evolving, revolving and has unlimited beauty and light inside which radiates outwards for everyone to see and feel. With every in breatheyou are adding...

Will stared down at his hands. “My whole life wrecked, destroyed…” “You’re seventeen,” Magnus said. “You can’t have wrecked a life you’ve barely lived.

I don’t feel strong anymoreI feel like falling to my knees.Things aren’t the way they were before,They’re not the way they’re supposed to be.

Depression weighs you down like a rock in a river. You don’t stand a chance. You can fight and pray and hope you have the strength to swim, but sometimes, you have to let yourself...

Perhaps the greatest neutralizer of sadness rests with two simple words : thank you.

Somehow they fail to see that for someone aggravated by depression, self-help will be useless, indeed, it is precisely the self that needs to be forgotten.

Sufría menos con un dolor real y físico que con el temor de agonía de que volviera la conciencia y me arrebataran la copa del olvido que la muerte me brindaba.

At heart, I have always been a coper, I’ve mostly been able to walk around with my wounds safely hidden, and I’ve always stored up my deep depressive episodes for the weeks off when there...

When I’d confronted him, he’d left me and, like a parasite finding a fresh host, moved in with her.

J’ai des papillons noirs tous les jours (I have black butterflies every day)

Again, all of life presents us with two basic ways to treat events. We can either label them “god for us” or “bad for us.” The event is only an event. It’s how we treat...

How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and...

I needed somewhere that wasn’t bad. I wanted to be light and happy like you, and I wanted never for you to see the dark. I was scared I would infect you with terrible feelings...

There is no loss, if you cannot remember what you have lost.

Being in home is like magic moments, in a magic world, among magicians.

Keedwell cites a study of depression in the Netherlands that found that most people coped better with adversity after experiencing depression.

It’s as if a child with a brush and too much enthusiasm has been set free with a tin of black paint inside me.

Night—it’s the only thing that will cover up one of my black moods. Good thing my depression isn’t an every day kind of thing. It’s an after day thing.

I’ve been clinging to this world like a discarded shell of an insect stuck to a branch, about to be blown off forever by a gust of wind.

Once you start down the slippery slope of depression, it’s hard to climb off of it. And sometimes you don’t want to climb off of it.

For some reason I am one of those people who act like they were born and raised during the Depression.

It was days like this when I felt it more than ever: I wasn’t a real human.

Only the weak invite their demons to live with them. Isn’t that right?