Reasons to Stay Alive

“It is the wrong word. The word depression makes me think of a flat tyre, something punctured and unmoving. Maybe depression minus anxiety feels like that, but depression laced with terror is not something flat or still.”

This opening chapter addresses The Relationship Between Society and Mental Health and, in particular, the stigma against treating mental illness as a real disease. This perspective is echoed repeatedly throughout the book. Here, Haig examines the gap between depression and the limited language society has with which to talk about it. He also examines depression coupled with anxiety; unlike stereotypical ideas of mental illness, depression and anxiety together aren’t static, but volatile.

“As people who kill themselves are, more often than not, depressives, depression is one of the deadliest diseases on the planet. It kills more people than most other forms of violence—warfare, terrorism, domestic abuse, assault, gun crime—put together.”

Haig offers statistics to illustrate the subversive danger of depression, anxiety, and mental illness. In this chapter, he shows the gravity of depression and sets the tone for the rest of the memoir.

“But depression is a kind of quantum physics of thought and emotion. It reveals what is normally hidden.”

While depression is a deadly disease, Haig argues that it also allows for heightened sensitivity, creativity, and awareness. Here, Haig begins exploring the complexity, duality, and limitless potential of the human mind.