It's very personal - why I write about my own life in public

Why do I expose such personal material in such a public way? Do I really want people who read it to know I had a mammogram the other day? (Not that that's a bad thing!) That I tried to kill myself once, that I have bad days sometimes, and other incredibly personal things? Apparently I do, or I wouldn't write about them! It's not like anyone's got a gun to my head, threatening to shoot me if I don't blog about my personal life. So why do I do it?

I was reminded of the reason I do this when I read a recent post on the very good blog (here on blogger) happinesspursuing (I've posted the link in the list to the left of this post.). It was in answer to a young man who asked 1/ why go on in the face of chronic depression? and 2/ will the depression ever go away? The very thoughtful and constructive response from the guy who does the blog (sorry, didn't get anything as specific as his name!) and people who commented on his post reconnected me with my own purpose in writing about depression and happiness. I do it so that people who are currently suffering from this miserable illness and stumble across my blog can be reassured that it is possible to transform depression into happiness, albeit imperfect and prone to relapse. That is the nature of the beast - relapse is a given, not a possibility. But the more important news is that recovery and happiness are possible.

I know that when I had my first experience of major, suicidal depression in 1982, so bad that I stopped working and spent most of my time hanging out in my pj's, doing my best impression of wallpaper, that I was desperate to hear about people who had recovered. I had a good friend who worked with someone who'd had a very severe depression, so bad she'd voluntarily gone into a private psychiatric hospital, some years before. She'd got well enough to go back to work and function fairly normally, something that had seemed beyond me then. I used to ask my friend about what her workmate had done, and hung on every word I got about her.

So it's a privilege and a pleasure to be able to be that role model I once craved, and give some if the information on what works which I was so desperate to learn. Depression is a worldwide epidemic according to the World Health Organisation, surpassed only by heart disease and predicted to exceed it. Recovery rates are fairly low despite the slew of effective therapies around. (Recovery in this context means going some years without a relapse and reoccurence of symptoms.) So every person who can give a message of hope and recovery to those who suffer has a story worth telling as publicly as possible.