The "Personal Guide to Depression" is a literary account of personal experiences about depression. Step by step, Tomasz Jastrun tracks and describes depression like a beast that can take various forms. "I am sharing my experience here with you who suffer from depression. Wherever you are, at the bottom or in less painful circles, I remind you - this is not only your drama. I share my own experiences, but also refer to the experiences of others. I want to describe depression from various sides, and it has countless faces, characters, forms and stages, from mild to serious to extremely dramatic. There is no single depression, as many as there are sufferers, but in its multiplicity it has many common features "- writes the author in the introduction to the book. Poradnikzdrowie.pl assumed media patronage over the publication.
Tomasz Jastrun - poet, prose writer, journalist - has been struggling with depression for many years. His book is a kind of a guide, as well as an intimate, dramatic attempt to describe the fight against depression and to familiarize the people affected with it, as well as their relatives, what this mysterious disease really is.
Excerpt from the "Personal Guide to Depression"
"Real depression. What does it mean real? Perhaps it is better to say - serious, i.e. painful or deep, is such an overwhelming experience, such great suffering that when it passes, you come back to it reluctantly. unbelievable, like a torture chamber. You can live after such an experience, also because you forget about it. Depression is similar to a concentration camp or a penal colony, not only because you have the impression that you want to annihilate us, but it also locks us up One thing is certain - willpower, cunning and wisdom will not help you escape. You can count on time, on psychotherapy, but most of all on medicines, they are getting better, although still imperfect.
The first depression is a special shock. We don't understand what is happening to our soul and body. If the disease comes back, and usually comes back, having had some experience with it, we do better than the first time. Then the novelty and unusualness of the situation arouses particular dread. Even if subsequent relapses tend to be more severe, which is unfortunately the tendency, we feel more confident anyway. Knowing the topography helps to survive depression. The more we know about it, the better our chance of surviving. This book is also supposed to serve this purpose.
Remember that depression due to suicide is a disease in 25% of cases fatal. This is the only sure escape from it. And as someone has rightly pointed out, depression without support is a fatal disease. She also happens to be with support.
It is said that an alcoholic can only be understood by another alcoholic, and the same is true for depression. Although it is difficult to fully understand here, when you recover from depression, you stop understanding your own thinking from the time of illness.
This message is addressed mainly to those who are already in "Club D", to their families, but also to people who want to get to know this seemingly distant world, which is really close, behind a thin wall, but dormant. So maybe you lucky people who do not know depression will learn what to do so as not to wake it up. Depression can happen to anyone at some point in their life. Then we say to ourselves: why exactly me, I never expected something like this to happen to me.
There is a striking increase in the incidence of depression today. If it were contagious, one could speak of an epidemic. Since this is the case wherever our civilization has reached, we also need to consider the sociological and psychological basis of this disease. Extremely burdensome, it is a delicate term, but also unusual in its scale and symptoms. It touches the core of our existence in the most painful place.
My story is a personal guide and tutorial. I am not afraid to use metaphors, poetry, accounts and quotes also because depression eludes words. "
About the author
Tomasz Jastrun - poet, prose writer, essayist, literary critic, columnist and reporter. Author and co-author of many books, incl. "Tender eye", "Dreams that wake up", "Male half of the world" (Zwierciadło Publishing House) and the novels "Penal Colony". He collaborated, among others with "Kultura", "Rzeczpospolita", "Newsweek". For many years associated with the magazine "Zwierciadło". Winner of numerous awards, incl. the literary award of the Parisian Kultura. He is one of the ambassadors of the social campaign "Faces of Depression. I do not judge. I accept. "
