Description

Living With Depression
By Anna Ballard

ISBN: 978-1-84747-008-9
Published: 2006
Pages: 226
Key Themes: depression, poetry, medication, mental health services, recovery

Description

This insightful book takes you on a journey through the feelings of mental health sufferers on the long road to recovery. Anna provides an emotive understanding of depression and seeks to eliminate the stigma related to it. Heart warming and emotional poetry which will be enjoyed by anybody but particularly those who have a similar history to Anna.

What prompted me to start writing was a change in antidepressant, which I believe stimulated the creative part of my brain the right hemisphere that wasnt being used before. The effect was quite dramatic and within a week of starting on the new drug I began to churn out my thoughts as poetry. I had never written anything before but what initially started out as a whim rapidly turned into something more substantial. At my peak I was composing one or two poems a day but this has now moderated and I only write when something new happens in my life that I want to document it. Anna Ballard

About the Author

I was born and brought up in the Vale of Evesham, in the heart of England. As the youngest of four children I have three older brothers I was some what spoiled particularly by my father.

It was after the birth of my second child that I started to have mental health problems. Firstly I was diagnosed with postnatal depression but this soon turned into clinical depression and in 2000 I suffered a nervous breakdown. I was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and detained in hospital for many weeks.

The road to recovery has been a bumpy one but my illness is now well managed with drugs and psychological backup. My research work has been curtailed but I am still employed in a hospital environment and I get a lot of job satisfaction from helping others. Recently I have started to give back to the system from which I have taken so much by sharing my poetry with other sufferers. I hope that what I have done will enlighten and inspire you the reader.