Living Around the Blues

When the people around you suffer.

Anthea Rowan is a British journalist based in Tanzania. See full bio

July 12, 2009

The Dangers of heeding Good Diet advice

Mum was once persuaded by a nutritionist (who I thought was too fat, given her profession) that her diet was the root cause of her vulnerability to Depression.

My initial doubt (flashing red beacon: but we already do that whole three, or is it five? helpings of fresh fruit and veg thing every day) ought to have served as a warning. Read More

July 9, 2009

Blue-Gened Girl?

I am lucky: I grew up with a mother who suffered, still sometimes suffers, from Depression.

No really; I am. Lucky.

I hate that she must battle this demon; I hate her pain. But it's hers. As much as I'd like to make it all better when she is sick, I can't. Just as I cannot feel it as acutely as she does. I shouldn't feel lucky (because it sounds perverse). Read More

July 8, 2009

No Woman No Cry

Depression affects more women than men. Fact. Twice as many more. Every year an estimated 12 million women fall prey to the illness and one in eight will succumb at least once in her life time. Read More

July 6, 2009

Chin Up!

A memory.

I am fourteen. Read More

July 1, 2009

All in the Name

Mum and I are in the car, I am driving. She is well. It means her tongue is not tied by Depression's paralyzing lethargy.

‘What do you think of the word, anyway', I ask, ‘of the word of depression?'

It's not big enough, Mum says simply.

She's right. It's not. Big enough. Read More

June 26, 2009

Snake Oil and Wrinkle Therapy

Botox Appears to Ease Depression announces a newspaper headline. The doctor who made the claim observes, "Maybe the frown is not just an end result of the depression; maybe you need to frown in order to be depressed."

Is that all it takes then? To lift a mood so catastrophically compromised it can result in hospital admission? Read More

June 23, 2009

Depression Does Not Discriminate

Depression descends by icy degrees. It tiptoes in.

When Mum first got sick it wasn't as if she was pitched head first into gloom overnight. So that one day she was there and the next she wasn't. (Depression steals the very essence of a person so that the one you knew - that familiar smiling, dependable, rock-solid soul - morphs into somebody you've never met before). Read More

June 19, 2009

One in four, one in six, one in ten ...?

By the year 2020, Depression will, according to the World Health Organization and on account of high suicide rates, be the world's second biggest killer after heart disease and ahead of road accidents and Aids. Read More

June 9, 2009

How can you Get A Life when you can't take a shower?

I have lived with Depression for most of my life.

I am lucky.

I have lived with it; it has not lived within me.

It means the difference between being able to get up and walk away. And being stuck with it: day after day after unrelentingly black day. It means the difference between being able to get up in the morning and face a new dawn. Read More

Depression Basics

Some 15 million Americans struggle with depression—an illness that comes in many forms—from major depression and seasonal affective disorder, to dysthymia and bipolar disorder.

Go to the Depression Basics page for more on Depression including:

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