Not another blog!

It seems that everyone and his dog has a blog these days and now I too have joined the ranks of the large army of bloggers. Don’t worry I’m not going to bore you with the intricate details of my everyday life. The theme for my blog is “depression”. Now why would I pick such a depressing topic? Well firstly, I have struggled with depression for most of my life and know a thing or two about it firsthand, especially what it feels like. Secondly, I have written a book on depression and how to manage it and thirdly, there are so many things that I also wanted to include in the book but there was just not enough room. So I thought I’d cover these extra thoughts here.

Why would I write a book about depression? I’m not a mental health professional. Well basically, when I was trying to get on top of my depression, using the methods of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and under the supervision of my therapist, I tried to find some literature on the subject. What I found was a lot of really thick books with lots of complicated texts not explaining anything I could understand. When you’re depressed it is hard to set the brain in motion. You want something easy to digest, maybe even something you just need to look at and still get the message, something that entices you to turn the page and read on, is uplifting and makes you smile sometimes, but it also has to be based on scientific facts. Since there was nothing like this on the market we had to create it ourselves.

Professor Tian Oei provided the scientific facts, Marco Schmidt drew the over 200 illustrations, of which 130 ended up in the book, so that the reader has something to look at if they can’t handle the text yet. And I wrote the book in such a language that everybody can understand it, even if they are going through a depressive episode. To explain the points I’ve drawn from my own experiences of living with depression. It took us two years to bring this book to publication. It has been favourably reviewed by numerous professional organizations in Australia such as beyondblue, the Mental Health Council of Australia and the Psychologist Society, just to name a few. If you want to look at some sample pages or read the reviews go to our website listed above the picture of the book.


Now what do I want to achieve with this blog? Well, I’d like to use it to record some of the experiences I’ve made in my fight to manage depression, some of the things that have worked for me. I would also like to bring this “hidden” topic into the open. Maybe someone who is also struggling with depression can relate to some of the issues mentioned here.

I don’t know how often I will be posting. I’ll just play it by ear, if I have something to say I will say it. I hope this will be an interesting experience for all of us.