Sylvia Plath's fictionalized account of a young author who had already tried suicide and who would soon kill herself:

I was still wearing Betsy's white blouse and dirndl skirt. They drooped a bit now, as I hadn't washed them in my three weeks at home. The sweaty cotton gave off a sour but friendly smell.

I hadn't washed my hair for three weeks, either.

I hadn't slept for seven nights.

My mother told me I must have slept, it was impossible not to sleep in all that time, but if I slept, it was with my eyes wide open, for I had followed the green luminous course of the second hand and the minute hand and the hour hand of the bedside clock through their circles and semi-circles, every night for seven nights, without missing a second, or a minute, or an hour.

The reason I hadn't washed my clothes or my hair was because it seemed so silly.

I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue.

It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next.

It made me tired just to think of it.

I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it...

That morning I had tried to hang myself.

I had taken the silk cord of my mother's yellow bath- robe as soon as she left for work, and, in the amber shade of the bedroom, fashioned it into a knot that slipped up and down on itself. It took me a long time to do this, because I was poor at knots and had no ideas how to make a proper one.

Then I hunted around for a place to attach the rope.

The trouble was, our house had the wrong kind of ceilings.

The ceilings were low, white and smoothly plastered, without a light fixture or a wood beam in sight. I thought with longing of the house my grandmother had before she sold it to come and live with us, and then with my Aunt Libby.

My grandmother's house was built in the fine, nineteenth-century style, with lofty rooms and sturdy chandelier brackets and high closets with stout rails across them, and an attic where nobody ever went, full of trunks and parrot cages and dressmakers' dummies and overhead beams thick as a ship's timbers.

But it was an old house, and she'd sold it, and I didn't know anybody else with a house like that.

After a discouraging time of walking about with the silk cord dangling from my neck like a yellow cat's tail and finding no place to fasten it, I sat on the edge of my mother's bed and tried pulling the cord tight.

But each time I would get the cord so tight I could feel a rushing in my ears and a flush of blood in my face, my hands would weaken and let go, and I would be all right again.

Then I saw that my body had all sorts of little tricks, such as making my hands go limp at the crucial second, which would save it, time and again, whereas if I had the whole say, I would be dead in a flash.

I would simply have to ambush it with whatever sense I had left, or it would trap me in its stupid cage for fifty years without any sense at all. And when people found out my mind had gone, as they would have to, sooner or later, in spite of my mother's guarded tongue, they would persuade her to put me into an asylum where I could be cured.

Only my case was incurable.16

There is a happy conclusion to the grim reports quoted above. Modern psychology and medicine provide rapid relief to most people who develop the sorts of depressions described in those reports. No more does a sufferer simply have to wait until nature takes it course, or until you can yourself can invent a way to successfully reshape your thinking patterns. Cognitive- behavioral therapy can promise relief to most people within a few months, accompanied by long-run protection against relapse by teaching you how to avoid depressing modes of thought. Drug therapy often provides fast relief of the symptoms, too, though without promising that your depression has been cured.

In view of the large number of depression sufferers -- a larger proportion of the population nowadays than ever before -- these advances must rank as among the most beneficial contributions of science to human welfare.

Summary

The chapter describes a variety of cases of depression, often in their own words. The rock-bottom element is the feeling of sadness. The term "sad" includes without distinction the feelings and moods one might call "melancholy," "blue," "being down," "misery," "grief," "despair," and similar descriptions of negative feeling. The prolonged feeling of sadness, plus the thought "I'm worthless", constitute depression; these two elements are the hallmarks of the depressed person.

A variety of other symptoms are also found in some depressed persons--inability to sleep, disinterest in sex, inability to work, for example. But these other symptoms are by no means universal.

A sense of helplessness, often with a sense of hopelessness, accompanies or is part of the sadness and lack of self-regard in depression. The helpless attitude might be considered part of the core of depression. A rigid set of "ought's" and "musts", and a absence of pleasurable experiences, frequently are important constituents, too.

next: Good Mood: The New Psychology of Overcoming Depression Chapter 3