Book Review “Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig”

Short Summary

This book is a memoir, presenting a true story about the author, intercepted at intervals to explain to the reader what depression really is. Matt Haig, at one stage of his life, experienced a severe type of depression. His other half, Andrea, helped him a lot during this time of distress. It was the depression that compelled him to write and become one of the best authors in America.

Depression is difficult to explain to those who haven’t experienced it. Moreover, minds are unique and everyone does not have the same precise experience of mental disorders. Depressives see no hope and feel they are alone and no one has gone through this. Depression is invisible, it’s not just feeling ‘a bit sad’. At its worse, depressive people want to harm themselves.

The warning signs that someone might be suffering from depression are fatigue, low self-esteem, psychomotor retardation (slow movements and slow speech), irritability, frequent crying episodes, anhedonia (the inability to experience pleasure in anything), and sudden introversion.

If you are depressed, you need to understand that nothing lasts forever. Everything changes. If you want to kill yourself, this is as low as it gets. There is only upwards from here. Depression is smaller than you. It operates within you. You were there before it.

Running is the best antidote to depression and anxiety. Writing, reading, talking, yoga and meditation are also useful.

If someone close to you suffers from depression, be there for them. Appreciate that depression is an illness. Understand that what might seem easy to you might be an impossible challenge for the depressive. Your comfort zone shrinks to almost none when you are depressed. And above all, be patient.

Many times, depression is a blessing in disguise. If you have it once, you come to know how to deal with it. People often start doing valuable things when they are depressed. As is the case with Matt Haig, he started writing.

Strengths of the book

This book explains depression in an easy-to-understand way so that people who haven’t been depressed can also understand it. The author’s own story about coping with depression provides hope for those who are depressed. He gives details on the remedies he used to cope with depression. In addition to this, he also provides guidelines for those who have a depressed relative. The author also explains that depression can sometimes be a turning point in our lives, like he started writing when he was depressed and became a renowned author.

Weaknesses of the book

This book is completely based on the author’s experience and not on scientific research. On some occasions, the author’s claims are against established medical health facts. For instance, the author shows his distrust of anti-depressants. He points out that it is extremely difficult to select the right medicine. Plus, each medicine has a different composition and we don’t really know which chemical in the pills has anti-depressant activity. Moreover, different people are affected by different drugs which is a big question mark on their liability. These claims are baseless. It does take time to figure out which medicine works, but does that show anti-depressants cannot be trusted? Not at all. Different people are affected by different chemicals because of their different genetic makeup. And the same chemicals are used for close relatives as they have a somewhat similar genetic makeup, and so, the same chemical causes anti-depressant activity. And sometimes, in depression, there are huge chemical imbalances in the brain and a person cannot get out of depression without the help of anti-depressants. So this claim of the author is completely flawed.

The author didn’t opt to go for therapy during his episodes of depression, which isn’t wise at all. And you might feel that the author is bragging about it.

Conclusions

The book presents some very good methods to cope with depression, but at the same time, it also puts forth some wrong ideas. So, the reader must read the book with a sceptical eye but also embrace the good tactics the author talks about in the book.