Description

By Thomas Westmoreland

ISBN: 978-1-84991-668-4
Published: 2011
Pages: 88
Key Themes: Mental Health, Anxiety, Depression

Description

Tom was told that he had suffered a breakdown. He had experienced anxiety beforehand and subsequent depression. His book, The Agony Within, is about his breakdown, the anxiety he felt and his experience of depression, which he sees as a combined issue, due to the fact that he experienced them at the same time. For Tom, the term breakdown is very apt. It is a time when both the body and the brain come to a halt. His experience of anxiety saw him unsure of how to handle life, which affected both work and pleasure and here he allows an insight into these issues. For Tom depression is the easy part to explain, as it was the result of the breakdown and anxiety, and a time when he was coming to terms with what he had experienced, in an attempt to understand why he was at that place, at that time. For Tom it was possibly coming to terms with life as he saw it.

About the Author

Tom was born in 1956, he is married and a father of two from Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Tom believes that what he had experienced can be very destructive not only to the person, but to the family unit. Luckily for Tom his family understood and he had good friends. However Tom is aware that not everyone is this lucky and it could have been very different. Tom started to make notes about the way he felt, when he feel better than he had, for some time. The notes were edited, into this book to give an insight to the reader into what Tom calls The Agony Within. The aim is to help a wider audience to appreciate the issues, which are not always discussed openly. Tom did find the writing of notes quite invigorating, as at the time, it made him feel better about himself and it started to give him the confidence to move forward. As he was writing it allowed him some refection of his life as he saw it, which he now wishes to share.