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Depression has been called the world's number one public health problem. In fact, depression is so widespread it is considered the common cold of psychiatric disturbances. But there is a grim difference between depression and a cold. Depression can kill you.

Depressives have led countries, won wars, flown rockets to the moon, made great music. Don't let depression stop you employing someone, and never let it cause you to judge them. Depression is not a person. Like any other illness, it is something that happens to a person. It shouldn't define them.

Depression is something that doesn't just go away. It's just... there and you deal with it. It's like... malaria or something. Maybe it won't be cured, but you've got to take the medication you're prescribed, and you stay out of situations that are going to trigger it.

Depression is a horrible, potentially life-threatening illness - but the lives it threatens are almost always those of the people who suffer from it.

There seem to be many causes of depression. One cause is profound loss, grief. Economic hardship we know is linked to depression. We don't have a full picture.

Depression is a surfeit of empathy - a killing empathy - that makes depressives great friends to everyone but themselves. Having a self is a rough business, and depressives can empathize with others who have to deal with it, but not with themselves.

I believe that everyone experiences depression to some degree at some time in their lives. And there are probably millions of people who live with a low level of sadness and heaviness day in and day out.

Depression is a physical illness.

Here is the tragedy: when you are the victim of depression, not only do you feel utterly helpless and abandoned by the world, you also know that very few people can understand, or even begin to believe, that life can be this painful. There is nothing I can think of that is quite as isolating as this.

Depression is an illness and not a necessary part of healthy living.