I'm not sure that the benefit - as a writer and as a citizen - that I would get from reading at least the front page of the Times every day or every other day would outweigh the depression.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
No, originally I thought that writing articles would keep me from having to see a psychiatrist, but I became even more depressed as a result.
I saw what the Depression was doing to my students. Often they could get no jobs, or jobs which were wholly inadequate. And through them, I began to understand how deeply political and economic events could affect men's lives. I began to feel the need to participate more fully in the life of the community.
For me, my writing benefits from my experience.
As far as I was concerned, the Depression was an ill wind that blew some good. If it hadn't occurred, my parents would have given me my college education. As it was, I had to scrabble for it.
I'm a writer! If you work in an office, it dampens you. It makes you fit a routine. The effect of being a writer is not dissimilar to being long-term unemployed. And everyone knows that is not good for you.
I suffer depression only in the sense that I am a writer. We don't have proper jobs to go to. We are on our own all day. Show me a writer who doesn't get depressed: who has a completely stable mood. They'd be a garage mechanic or something.
I've dealt with depression my entire life, on and off, which makes me the perfect author for teenage readers.
I think depression creates in me an urgent need to write, but I also believe that daily stress, and even the positive 'stress' of intense happiness, can compel me to express myself through the written word.
The greatest benefit of depression is the fact that when I have talked about it, every so often someone comes up and says, 'You saved my dad's life.'
I do not take a single newspaper, nor read one a month, and I feel myself infinitely the happier for it.