Depression is a topic that could fill a library. It would therefore be presumptuous to assume I can solve any profound issues you might be having in one chapter. But what I can do, is change your thinking to such an extent you end up managing your ‘blues’ a lot better than you have been.

Another truism about depression attributed to the late Dr Wayne Dyer, is: “Depression doesn’t cause inactivity. Inactivity causes depression.”

This is also true.

The next time you start feeling down for no obvious reason, the next time things start looking hopeless, find something to do.

Clean your room if you haven’t left it yet. Or tidy the house. Wash your car. Go for a run. Cook a five-course meal. Go shopping, (when you see how expensive everything is it might make you more depressed so scrap this idea …). Go to a movie. Start writing a book.

Soon you will find the dark, menacing feelings of impending doom will disappear. Conversely, lie on your bed and stare at the ceiling. It won’t take long, and the longer you lie there you will feel hugely worse.

I think I am a mild depressive.

Once for a period of three months I was seriously down and took tablets to deal with it. They weren’t much use. All they did was ‘neutralise’ living. I neither felt happy or sad. It was as if the pills just soaked up the joy of life and left me not caring either way how I felt.

However I recovered and now am constantly on the look-out ever since for a possible return of the glums. In the process I have developed several coping skills, to keep any lurking depressive thoughts away. This translates into having to change my situation to one where I haven’t got time to be depressed.

The nano-second the darkness starts creeping in I become a jet-propelled, busy bee on steroids, sometimes much to the consternation of whomever I am with.

But it works.

Probably the best way of extricating yourself from a beckoning black hole is to become mindful. To live in the now.

It is astonishing how we spend a large part of our lives waiting to live in another moment. We look forward to lunch; going to the movies; work finishing; winter being over; our kids being older; graduating; getting married; having grandchildren; going on holiday … .

But every moment we are looking forward to is just another present moment to live in when it arrives. So why don’t we do it now? Live in the moment? Then, when we get to the moment we were so looking forward to, we can thoroughly enjoy it because we will know how to live in it.

Living in the present moment removes fears of the future; fears of all the things we feel in our depressed state are going to go wrong; fears of being useless, because we can do something not useless in the present. The past has gone. It becomes of no influence force or effect if we live in the present. Because it is not there. It is gone.

Depression is the No. 1 risk factor for suicide. Fortunately, it is possible to prevent these consequences. We know from research early detection and treatment of depression offer a good chance for recovery.