Depression Biography

Marise was nine when she first realised there was trouble, 14 when her dad tried to end it all, and 23 when he finally succeeded. In a turmoil of conflicting emotions, Marise runs - from Dublin to Amsterdam to Los Angeles, leaving a trail of sex and self-destruction in her wake. Until finally, she finds herself facing what she's become in a California psych ward, a girl imploding through trying to make sense of her father's suicide.

When Seán meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe depression, the couple comes face-to-face with crisis. Wrestling with this, Seán Hewitt delves deep into his own history, enlisting the ghosts of queer figures and poets before him. From a 19th-century cemetery in Liverpool to the pine forests of Gothenburg, Hewitt plumbs the darkness in search of solace and hope. All Down Darkness Wide is an unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds.

Like most Americans at the time, Plennie Wingo was hit hard by the effects of the Great Depression. When the bank foreclosed on his small restaurant in Abilene, he found himself suddenly penniless with nowhere left to turn. After months of struggling to feed his family on wages he earned digging ditches in the Texas sun, Plennie decided it was time to do something extraordinary - something to resurrect the spirit of adventure and optimism he felt he'd lost. He decided to walk around the world - backward.

On December 7th, 1955, Kitty McInerney lay dying in a New York hospital bed. The 47-year-old Irish immigrant, suffering from severe toxemia, was preparing for an emergency c-section to give birth to her 17th child. As a Catholic priest performed her last rites, Kitty succumbed to a rare moment of quiet reflection.

At the psychologist's clinic of an NHS hospital, Noah needs help with procrastination, Bill compulsively lies, Steph is coping with rejection and their therapist, Dr Natalie, is dealing with her own emotional crisis, breathing into a paper bag between patient sessions. In this lively and honest memoir of training to be a psychotherapist, we meet the patients grappling with mental health issues, from OCD and addiction to self-deception and self-harming, and see how Dr Natalie helps them understand and change these attempts to self-soothe.

The men and women honored in Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation speak in this collection of letters from and about the Depression and World War II.

Reminiscing about the people and events that shaped him, David looks back at the highs and lows of his life, from his rejection of being gay and his attempt to "turn straight" through Aesthetic Realism, a cult in downtown Manhattan, to becoming a writer, cookbook author, and web publisher, to his 23-year relationship with Alan, known to millions of David's readers and listeners as "The One", which began with (what else?) food.

This compelling, heart-to-heart true story leaves its listeners inspired with a speechless sense of wonder. Bipolar Firsthand is a gift to humanity. People with manic depression are like the epicenter of an earthquake; no one nearby is left untouched. Living and breathing in this book, the author shines light on her soul's darkest hours and highest highs. She states that bipolar illness can be a learned condition, not necessarily a genetic, inherited disease.

When England beat Pakistan to become T20 World Champions in November 2022, they crowned an extraordinary rise to the top from the depths of 2015, and became the first male side to hold the 20-over and 50-over titles at the same time. This is the story of how they got there. From early failure, to the building of a golden generation, and a look to the future, this is the must-listen story from the key protagonists about building one of England’s most successful sporting teams from rubble.

The Great Depression was a time of desperation in America - parents struggled to feed their children and unemployment was at a record high. Adding to the lawlessness of the decade, thugs with guns and corrupt law-enforcement officers ran rampant. But amidst this panic, there was one surefire way to make money, one used by criminals and resourceful civilians alike: kidnapping. The Kidnap Years is a thoughtfully reported pause-resister that chronicles the sweep of abductions that afflicted all corners of the country as desperate people were pushed to do the unthinkable.

One man discovers a new hobby in his journey to recover from depression. In Wild Coin Hunting, Robert W. Griggs details his invention of a new sport, explaining how the rules of hunting “wild coins” also serve as practices to recover joy while living with depression. The result is a relatable narrative that balances humor with hard truths. Wild Coin Hunting dispenses with the well-worn tropes of self-help books, focusing instead on the return of pleasure and other recovery essentials.

As a child, Luiz Schwarcz knew little about his grandfather and namesake, Lajos. Only later did he learn that Lajos, a devout Hungarian Jew, had been put on a train to a Nazi death camp with his son André, whom he ordered to leap to freedom at a rail crossing while he himself was carried on to death. What young Luiz did know was that his father, André, who had emigrated to Brazil, was an unhappy and silent man. Luiz blossomed into the family prodigy, becoming a groundbreaking literary publisher. He found a home in the family silence—a home that he filled with reading.

When Mark Henick was a teenager in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, he was overwhelmed by depression and anxiety that led to a series of increasingly dangerous suicide attempts. One night, he climbed onto a bridge over an overpass and stood in the wind, clinging to a girder. Just as Henick’s feet touched open air, a man in a brown coat encircled his chest and pulled him to safety. This near-death experience changed Henick’s life forever. So-Called Normal is Henick’s memoir about growing up in a broken home and the events that led to that fateful night on the bridge.

The memoirs collected in this book tell of an America where families and neighbors came together to help each other survive America's longest and deepest economic depression. These are memories of ordinary Americans of a time now nearly forgotten.

Black Rainbow is the powerful first-person story of one woman's struggle with depression and how she managed to recover from it through the power of poetry. In 1997, Oxford graduate, working mother, and Times journalist Rachel Kelly went from feeling mildly anxious to being completely unable to function within the space of just three days.

Richard Carlson Jr. was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when he was 21 years of age. His illness first manifested when he was an early adolescent. Modern psychiatry greatly failed Richard for over a decade. Then, after an incident involving the police, he truly understood that his diagnosis was real, and finally began the long process of recovery. Over 10 years later, his life is greatly improved. In the course of his treatment, Richard also recovered from depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and lethargy.

Rachel Bloom has felt abnormal and out of place her whole life. In this exploration of what she thinks makes her 'different', she's come to realise that a lot of people also feel this way - even people who she otherwise thought were 'normal'. In a collection of laugh-out-loud funny essays, all told in the unique voice (sometimes singing voice) that made her a star, Rachel writes about everything from her love of Disney, OCD and depression, weirdness and female friendships to the story of how she didn't poop in the toilet until she was four years old.

Keith Foskett refused to let his dark mood define his limitations. Unknowingly suffering with depression, he took to hiking the wilds of Scotland to face the inner demons that threatened to gnaw him to the bone. From the craggy Highlands of the Cape Wrath Trail and West Highland Way to the canals crisscrossing the low country, 600 miles of unforgiving hiking terrain called his name.

At 25, as her wedding date approached, Laura Smith began to feel trapped. Not by her fiancé, who shared her appetite for adventure, but by the unsettling idea that it was hard to be at once married and free. Laura wanted her life to be different. She wanted her marriage to be different. And she found in the strangely captivating story of another restless young woman determined to live without constraints both an enticement and a challenge.

After struggling with anxiety and depression during her formative years, Margy turned to alcohol to self-medicate and quieten her inner turmoil. Through two failed marriages and fractured relationships, a teaching career spanning 32 years, and two children, Margy finally kicked the wine witch to the curb and found her own voice.