Breaking Down Barriers

Mental breakdown isnt just a surfeit of emotion: the reality can be intensely physical, even debilitating. But for those who havent experienced it, it can seem unknowable. Here, seven men and women describe the toughest moments of their lives, as part of our ongoing campaign #MendTheGap which aims to dismantle the stigma around mental health issues and encourage others to speak up

- Julian Benjamin

In a 1998 piece for the New Yorker, the writer Andrew Solomon demonstrated why he is the most vivid, incisive chronicler of severe depression. “I was feeling too lacklustre to invite many people,” he recalled of a party held to celebrate the publication of his debut novel. “[I] was too tired to stand up much… When I got home, terror seized me. I lay in bed, not sleeping and hugging my pillow for comfort. Two weeks later – the day before my 31st birthday – I left the house once, to buy groceries; petrified for no reason, I suddenly lost bowel control and soiled myself. I ran home, shaking, and went to bed, but I did not sleep, and could not get up the following day. I wanted to call people to cancel birthday plans, but I couldn’t. I lay very still and thought about speaking, trying to figure out how. I moved my tongue, but there were no sounds. I had forgotten how to talk. Then I began to cry without tears. I was on my back. I wanted to turn over, but couldn’t remember how to do that, either. I guessed that perhaps I’d had a stroke.”

Solomon’s words were the only succour I could find during my own, equally physical, experiences of chronic depression. At my lowest ebb, it was not stereo typically dark. My depression was painfully bright, lurid and loud. It was the panic induced by sunlight coruscating through the blinds at dawn. It was the clanging ring of a phone call from a friend I couldn’t bear to take for fear of having to explain myself. It was everyday life, only painted in unbearable, terrifying strokes.