The Noonday Demon: An Anatomy of Depression

the combination of drugs and therapy works better than either one alone.

I tried hard to die but have an enchanted life.

is always on the edge of falling down again.

There is a lot of volition but you can’t control the recovery. You can’t figure out when it will happen, any more than you can predict when someone will die

Depression lowers self-esteem, but in many personalities, it does not eliminate pride, which is as good an engine for the fight as any I know. When you’re so far down that love seems almost meaningless, vanity and a sense of obligation can save your life.

the locus coeruleus in the brain controls both norepinephrine production and the lower bowel, at least half of anxiety-disorder patients have irritable bowel syndrome as well; and anyone who has had really intense anxiety knows just how fast and furiously food can run through the digestive system.

Depression is a response to past loss, and anxiety is a response to future loss.”

but I was too frightened to chew.

The best defense, for people with a biological vulnerability, is a “good enough” marriage, which absorbs external humiliations and minimizes them. “The psychosocial creates biological changes,” Brown acknowledges. “The thing is that the vulnerability must initially be triggered by external events.”

The biggest stress is humiliation; the second is loss.