Reading

Short list. I'm wary of book recommendations in this subject, because a book that met one person where they were can land very badly on someone else.

The ones I return to

• William Styron, Darkness Visible. Short, precise, and written by someone who could actually write. The standard against which I measure the rest.
• Andrew Solomon, The Noonday Demon. Long and demanding. Worth it for the range — it covers far more than one person's account.
• Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive. Gentler than the other two. People either find it a lifeline or find it thin; both reactions are common and neither is wrong.

What I'd avoid

Anything promising a method in the subtitle. Anything where the author's recovery is the whole structure, because recovery narratives quietly imply that not recovering is a failure of effort. And anything that explains the entire subject with one mechanism — a single chemical, a single trauma, a single habit. It's never that tidy.

Not books

The most useful reading I've done wasn't about depression at all. Long, slow, undramatic non-fiction about something else entirely — canals, printing, the postal system. Attention is easier to lend to something that isn't you.