In 2015, I went to the gym like any ordinary day. I didn’t come home.

I had a heart attack and died on the gym floor. By sheer chance, a doctor was training nearby. He used a portable defibrillator to restart my heart and saved my life. Two years later, that same man took his own life.

I had previously experienced a clinical depressive episode, and his suicide devastated me. It also ignited a deeper need to understand depression – not just as a diagnosis, but as a lived reality. That moment became the catalyst for the book I am now trying, very urgently, to finish.

My life has been shaped by serious medical challenges. If gathering serious medical disorders ever becomes an Olympic event, I should finish among the medals. In 2000, I suffered a severe stroke and spent two years recovering. I am now 73. Like many freelance writers, I have always worked job to job – editing, writing, taking whatever comes in to keep going.

So I keep on writing.

This book draws on:

• Deep personal reflection (auto-ethnographic work)
• Extensive interdisciplinary research
• Numerous qualitative interviews
• A pragmatic principle: You don’t need to know which rock triggers an avalanche in order to deal with it

While biological, psychological, and social explanations of depression are acknowledged, the book focuses on something often missing from the conversation: agency, coping, and recovery – how people can reduce the debilitating effects of depression, regardless of its origin.

Beyond TikTok cures, social media self-help, and endless noise, there are real, practical methods that can help people manage this confusing and tormenting disease.

Depression is one of the leading causes of disability worldwide. It affects hundreds of millions of people. In South Africa alone, the South African Depression and Anxiety Group (SADAG) handles over 3 000 calls every single day. Despite advances in medication and therapy, rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide continue to rise – driven by accelerated social change, digital overload, and a growing erosion of meaning and purpose.

In many ways, depression has become more of a global pandemic than COVID ever was.

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