According to the Mental Health Foundation mixed anxiety and depression is the most common mental disorder in the UK with one in four people experiencing some kind of mental health problem in the course of a year. Major depression is the number one psychological disorder in the Western world, with its growth seen most markedly amongst teens. The disease is also on the rise amongst children- and make no mistake- it is a disease. It’s not weakness, or softness. It’s not madness, although it can lead to breakdown if it is allowed to run amok in its victims minds for long enough unchecked. According to Aware Defeat Depression , in Northern Ireland the amount of adults diagnosed with depression increased by 3.1% in the five years between 2007 and 2012. Depression may not be caused by a physical virus or cancerous growth, but it can be just as fatal. It was reported in February last year that the Northern Ireland suicide rate had risen by 100% in less than 15 years. Not all of these suicides will have been due to depression, but many of them will have been. In August 2010 there was a spate of suicides in Belfast among young people, and only last December there were 12 in the greater Craigavon area.

The most disturbing facet to suicide is that children are not exempt, and that is something I personally find it difficult to get my head around. How terrible must their suffering be? It seems perverse that a creature as optimistic and innocent as a child can even consider killing themselves. When I was a child I could not imagine any scenario that would lead to me even being depressed, much as I understood the concept. Granted I did not know much about the affliction, but to me it was something that belonged firmly in the hazy, far off realm of adulthood. When I was eight I played with dinosaur toys and watched cartoons on a Saturday morning with my brother. Imagining a child the same age fashioning a noose and kicking away a big red bucket of Lego out from under their feet is about the most chilling thing in the world. How can so young a heart have accumulated so much despair? The answer seems incomprehensible, but of course it is not- turn on the news for ten minutes and you are likely to get it- sexual and physical abuse by parents, priests, even other children. Cyber bullying, a term that did not yet exist when I was a kid, has become a massive factor. We like to think we will become more enlightened as we become more advanced, but sadly technological progress, for all its advantages, often creates more outlets for our baser instincts. Yet lurking there, hidden by all of that darkness is the other type of depression, the one that is not caused by external pressures. Depression it seems can be born of suffering, but it does not necessarily need a Doctor Frankenstein to provide the spark of life. Depression can arise in perfectly happy, safe individuals who have never known cruelty or loneliness- and this is the most baffling type. For many people it can be hard to tell where it truly came from. There’s a certain chicken and egg quality to the illness that can often only be entangled with therapy, and even then often remains a tangled mess. So it is with me.

For about the last ten years, maybe longer, I have been suffering from depression. I say maybe longer because depression is a nebulous, slippery thing- it’s not like I woke up one day and suddenly had it the way one might do with the flu. When exactly it started I may never know, but with hindsight I can detect its possible roots…then again it is hard to be sure. The author of ‘The Noonday Demon’, Andrew Solomon, himself a sufferer, talks about how you can only talk about depression in metaphor a lot of the time. I tend to agree with him. Depression stalks in the shadows for a long time before it breaks cover and pounces. It’s like that saying about boiling a frog alive. Throw it straight into the pot and it’ll jump right back out, but increase the temperature slowly and he’ll just sit there until he boils.

Of course I spent a long time convincing myself that I was merely of a melancholy disposition. When I began to suspect that It was depression I further convinced myself that I didn’t need any help. I was tough enough to put up with it, even defeat it on my own. The first time I really had a diagnosis was in 2004. I had started University the previous year, but to put it mildly, it had not gone well. I’d missed most of my seminars and lectures, made no friends and dropped down to about seven and half stone. To anyone looking from the outside in, my life probably seemed pretty good when I started University. Despite not working very hard at all I had gotten good grades in my A-Levels, been accepted into every University I applied for and started dating a pretty English girl who had actually been the one to pursue me. On the face of it I really should’ve been brimming with confidence (or an insufferably cocky git) yet I was miserable, withdrawn and lonely. My then girlfriend lived in Preston, Lancashire, so I only seen her once a month. That didn’t help.

I was barely eating. I felt utterly unable to socialise with the six other young people that lived in our very comfortable student house, despite the fact that they were all Christians and all perfectly easy to get on with. Instead I lived on microwavable food and spent a lot of time in my small room listening to music and occasionally writing. I am still to this day horribly impractical (thank God my wife is the exact opposite) I like to think that like Sherlock Holmes, I only keep the stuff I really need in my head- but back then I was even worse, and had no idea how to find out when and where my classes were. Approaching a fellow student or a teacher was out of the question. Around this time I also developed slight trembling in my hands and a slight muscular twitch, mostly in my right leg. Of course I had no idea that depression\stress could cause such things. I feared I had some terrible neurological condition. Depression makes you focus on your fears. It brings out the world in hues of black and grey; the darkness is deeper, the light dimmer. Cynicism seems like realism.

My self esteem plummeted along with my weight. I have always been very slim- in fact I can count on one hand the times I’ve seen a guy as slender as myself- but in 2003 I became dangerously thin. This effected me profoundly. I obsessed over it to the point where it was actually almost impossible to finish a meal, or eat much of anything substantial at all- mostly because I wanted to so much. I was at University, surrounded by beautiful young women who I knew wouldn’t so much as glance at me even if I was single. My acne got worse- eating nothing but chocolate and fast food can do that- further chipping away at my self esteem.

To combat my anxiety and boredom I walked. A lot. One particular night I will never forget. I must have set out from the student house at around ten O’ Clock, listening to The Eagles song, ‘Desperado’ on my mp3 player. The song is about loneliness and being careful not to cut yourself off from people for too long. I’ve always identified with it. I must have listened to it twenty times or more that night. I called my girlfriend looking for comfort but she was busy with study and since I was too ashamed to tell her how I felt the conversation was short and dissatisfying. Already she had begun to pull away from me. It would be a long time before I realised how much a part I played in our break up. I felt abandoned, utterly alone. True despair visited me for the first time that chilly night in Coleraine. I walked into town and ended up at the bridge. As I stared out across the river, watching the lights reflected off its glassy surface, I thought about suicide. I should qualify that- I did not consider killing myself at any point- what I mean is I thought about suicide. I thought about the kind of despair that would be so overwhelming it would cause someone to end their own life. I knew that feelings like those I was experiencing could lead to suicide. That night I called my mum and screamed down the phone that I couldn’t take it anymore; the loneliness, the weight loss, all of it. In the end talking to her calmed me down and I went home.

By the end of 2003 I had left University, convinced I was never going back. Were it not for a concerned English lecturer who called my parents I never would have. This lady, whose second name I unfortunately cannot remember, was called Anne. She was the then head if the English department at Coleraine University of Ulster if my memory serves me right. She told mum that the coursework I had handed in was excellent but that I was like a ghost. My coursework came in but no one knew who I was or had seen me in their seminars. She asked to see me and I might not have acquiesced were it not for the kind words of encouragement she had given me. Eventually she convinced me to return to the University. That year I got pretty low grades on at least two exams. I’d missed too many lectures, read too few books. I re-sat that August and passed well. The next year a friend of mine from high school started at Coleraine and moved into our house. He had a history with depression and together, with a fair amount of cynical humour, we got through.

In about 2004 I went to my GP, a very nice man who looked an awful lot like the Nazi who gets his head melted in Raiders of the Lost Ark. He had me fill out a questionnaire about my moods and feelings. After considering the questionnaire and talking to me for a while, he diagnosed me with a moderate depression and prescribed antidepressants. I took them for about a week then discarded them. I told my parents I didn’t like the side effects, and that was true to an extent, but in reality I was looking for any excuse not to take them. I feared taking pills would alter who I was, that needing them was a sign of weakness. I was still convinced I could get through it on my own.

It was, I think, April of 2006 when my girlfriend, by then my fiancée, left me. I was not surprised. She had grown more and more distant, burying herself in work and study. When I heard the words, ‘I can’t marry you,’ I was genuinely surprised that one of my first emotions was relief. The relationship had not been right for a long time- and on some level I knew I should have called the whole thing off long ago- but I held out hope that everything would be OK, and to be honest I thought no one else would ever have me. So low was my opinion of myself that my reaction to her leaving me was, ‘of course. I’m too skinny. I’m too quiet and shy. Why would she want me when she could have someone more muscular and out-going?’

So that was that. She never knew about my depression as I was too ashamed to tell her and thought she would see it as weakness. I took her leaving reasonably well at first, but as time passed I grew bitter. In order to deal with it I learnt to cut off my emotions, to simply block them. I grew cold and cynical, and despised many of my peers for what I viewed as their naive optimism, while I envied them for their happiness and effortless sociability. Somehow I managed to complete my dissertation and get a decent 2:1 later that year. I had been convinced I was headed for a third. That summer I moved back home and took a job teaching English and History at the Independent Christian School in Clogher Valley. I started to eat better thanks to my mother’s cooking but the weight gain was painfully slow. I was twenty one but frequently saw sixteen year old guys bigger than me. I can’t tell you how much I hated myself in those days. In fact I swung wildly between feelings of arrogance at my cleverness and imagination and great depths of self loathing at my weight and build. When I wasn’t teaching in the school I was usually found in my room at home, watching films, reading, or playing my Xbox 360. I stayed up late into the night, over- thinking the past or fantasising about the future.

It was during this time that the depression really began to deepen. I began to lose interest in the things I used to love. Films no longer thrilled me as they used to (unless I viewed them at the cinema. Even in depression the smell of popcorn and the power of proper Dolby surround sound can touch me) In the years to come I found it hard to get out of bed in the mornings- not because I was tired, but because I felt there was nothing to be excited about or to look forward to. Going through another day seemed like an insurmountable challenge. I lost the ability to laugh spontaneously, or take pleasure in much of anything. The numbness became all- encompassing. When you are depressed you think what you have is insight. You see the randomness of the world and the inevitability of death all too starkly. Everything seems futile, pointless. I knew this point of view was skewed. Intellectually I knew that I had a lot to live for, people who loved me, a good life, even a job I enjoyed. All that and I also maintained a strong faith in God. The depression remained. Faith helped, family helped- but nothing seemed enough to cut through the haze through which I viewed the world. The feeling of isolation was unbearable at times. I daydreamed constantly about being someone else, or at least a better version of myself.

In 2008 I met Debby, who saved me from spiralling completely out of control. I often think had I not met her when I did that I might have turned to drink or worse to dull my pain. That same year I left the school in Clogher Valley and ended up out of work just as the recession hit. I’ve been more out of work than in it ever since. I want to be clear- depression has never hindered me from getting work- it does not disable me in that way. I’ve always been ambitious, perhaps unrealistically so. For the longest time I wanted to go to film school and learn how to act or direct and I’ve always wanted to be a published novelist. I still do. In the summer of 2008 I looked into film school seriously, but came away deflated- it was far too expensive. As I filled in application after application I became more and more discouraged. Not only did I not get any of the jobs, but the jobs themselves seemed soul destroying to me. I am extremely easily bored and have a very overactive mind. No doubt this has contributed to my depression over the years. I was terrified I would end up in McDonalds or something. I lost my interest in writing, and almost all drive or motivation to do anything productive. I had memory problems. It felt like I was thinking through sludge or dense fog. Conversation was strained. Even my way with words was compromised, I was slower witted. Depression robs people of their vitality, their dynamism. I was tired all the time, mentally and physically, and no matter how much I slept I never seemed to have any more energy. A great melancholy would settle over me for no good reason, a fundamental sadness which had no particular cause. Other times I would become restless and tense, or just terribly anxious.

In 2009 I suffered from headaches more or less constantly- I of course assumed I had a tumour, not helped by the return of my muscular twitches. It turned out I was grinding my teeth during the day and in my sleep due to stress. My dentist gave me a mouth guard (when I say ‘gave’ I mean charged me over two hundred pounds for) and my doctor prescribed beta blockers. Within days of starting the beta blockers the headaches had gone and I was massively relieved. Within days they had been replaced with a stomach complaint that was to hound me for almost two years. Around the time of my wedding in 2010 I had a strange throat complaint- pain and a feeling of having a lump that scared me witless. A short while after arriving in Florida for our Honeymoon and relaxing a little and the throat trouble was completely gone. During a trip to the same place in 2011 the stomach trouble vanished.

Depression causes physical symptoms. For me it was almost as if my tension had to manifest somewhere in my body and every time I got over one complaint it would move, whack-a-mole-like, to another. Like a parasite or a virus, depression takes over the body and creates the perfect atmosphere in which it can thrive. Physical symptoms caused by the depression cause the sufferer to become even more depressed, and so on and so forth until a seemingly inescapable cycle is formed.

These physical symptoms of depression are perhaps not well known by the general public, but go some way to proving the power of the mind over the body. In his book The Noonday Demon, Andrew Solomon describes being virtually paralysed, almost rendered catatonic during one of his three breakdowns. My mother remembers nursing people who were much the same, locked in the most uncomfortable positions, unmoving. Like the ash impressions left by the people of Pompeii, these people were mere shadows of their former selves. I thank God he has spared me from any such symptoms. I’ve never had a breakdown, and I know from reading that I have thankfully never come close.

Over the years though I have experienced a catalogue of complaints, both directly and indirectly related to my depression. Sadness for no good reason is perhaps the most well known of symptoms and it can glide over you like a veil at any time. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and feel guilty for no reason, or unbearably tense. I’ve had muscular twitches, lapses in memory, loss of appetite, shaking hands, brain fog, psychosomatic symptoms such as mysterious aches, pains and sensations with no physical cause and of course, stomach upset. Stomach upset is almost a constant thing for me, although it varies greatly from the barely noticeable to the downright irritating. The brain and the gut have a close connection and in my case when I get tense I can actually feel a dull electric shock-like pulse in my stomach. My GP has diagnosed me with IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome) which is what doctors say you have when they don’t really know exactly what the cause of your stomach trouble is.

Other people have reported feeling terrified for no reason, so much so that they cannot leave their beds or walk in a crowd. Thankfully I have never suffered such crippling symptoms and I hope I never will.

Finally in 2012 it all came to a head. Although married to the woman I love with a baby on the way and living in a beautiful little apartment with all the mod cons I could possibly want, I was growing more and more unsettled. Knowing we were going to have a baby made me happy- in fact that knowledge made every day better- but it also brought its own stresses and worries. I still wasn’t employed. What kind of a father can’t provide for his family? Debby was due to go on maternity leave. How would we afford to live? As the child grew we would need a bigger house, etc…and so it went on. I felt like a failure. I felt bored and useless. I was always sad, always melancholy, never quite as present as I could have been. I didn’t want to be that kind of husband or that kind of father. I was also tired of not being able to get interested or inspired, not being able to take pleasure in music or books. I was tired of being bored all the time. Most days I would go for a walk down the road in order to unwind but return just as bored and disillusioned as I was when I left the house. I went to see my GP and he put me on Fluoxetine, apparently the standard drug they start you off on. Since then I have changed to Vensir XL, then upped my dose to 150mg. That is what I am currently taking, and I think it’s working pretty well. My mood is more stable, less unpredictable. There are side effects of course. All antidepressants have side effects, and if a particular type works well for you it is best to put up with them if you can. Drugs are not a perfect answer by any means, but I have less downers and when I am down I’m not down quite so deep. The fact that that I am writing this is testament to that. Motivation is returning. I’m reading again and enjoying it. I’m determined that this is the year I move heaven and earth to get my book finished and published.

Depression is something I may have to live with, to one degree or another. Even when I’m off medication I may still feel its gravitational tug. Depression is like a black-hole. It takes tremendous effort to escape its gravity and when you do you stay in orbit around it- if you do not work to maintain that orbit you will begin to fall inexorably inward again. You are always aware of this gravitational pull. It takes real effort to resist it. It takes none to fall victim to it. If you let yourself pass the event horizon of a black hole the laws of physics break down- and with depression it is the same. Get too deep into the despair and your mind will break down. Appropriately enough, not even light can escape from a black hole, but thankfully people can recover from mental breakdown with a great deal of help and support.

I’m not sure how to end this piece. If you are suffering depression, I can tell you there is hope. Don’t bottle it all up. Tell at least two people- a friend or family member you are close to and a GP. From there things can start to change. There are no easy answers, and personally I don’t believe in such things. Easy answers are always too good to be true. I can’t promise you instant improvement- it will take work, and patience- but I can promise you it will be worth it.