The Cruise Ship Suicides
Confined mostly to tiny cabins as the pandemic unfolded, crew members struggle to cope.
Great articles, every Saturday.
Confined mostly to tiny cabins as the pandemic unfolded, crew members struggle to cope.
Austin Carr Bloomberg Businessweek Dec 2020 20min Permalink
A father struggles with old and new parenting techniques.
Jane Snyder BULL Magazine Sep 2019 10min Permalink
My husband’s struggle with postpartum depression was my struggle, too.
Aubrey Hirsch Gay Mag Sep 2019 20min Permalink
The U.S. had been his home since he was 6 months old. When he was deported to Mexico 26 years later, it was more than he could bear.
Valeria Fernández California Sunday Aug 2019 20min Permalink
Unexpected reactions to a horrifying situation.
Cara Dempsey Monkeybicycle May 2019 Permalink
A depressed man attempts a home improvement project.
Kevin Maloney The Nervous Breakdown Apr 2019 Permalink
How Abraham Lincoln’s lifelong struggle with clinical depression was a key to his presidency.
Joshua Wolf Shenk The Atlantic Oct 2005 40min Permalink
Various forms of isolation in rural Canada.
Alison Braid Barren Magazine Jan 2019 15min Permalink
I know dudes like me aren’t supposed to talk about depression, but I’ll talk about it. If a real motherfucker like me can struggle with it, then anybody can struggle with it.
Darius Miles The Player's Tribune Oct 2018 25min Permalink
One frosty October morning in 1991, a newborn baby boy is found inside a plastic bag in an Oslo graveyard. This is his story, in nine parts.
Bernt Jakob Oksnes Dagbladet Oct 2016 2h Permalink
Scenes from a crumbling marriage, a friendship, a life in the painful present.
Ashley Hutson Split Lip Magazine Jul 2016 Permalink
A mysterious stone and the complexities of grief.
Zulema Renee Summerfield Guernica Apr 2016 25min Permalink
The view from a low point.
Kenneth R. Rosen The Big Roundtable Mar 2016 25min Permalink
A young girl uses unusual coping mechanisms after her father's death.
Erica X Eisen Atticus Review Mar 2016 Permalink
An essay on depression, art, and growing up.
Poetry Jenny Zhang Jul 2015 15min Permalink
A depressed young woman takes a serving job alongside ominous, creepy co-workers.
Hitomi Kanehara Granta Oct 2015 20min Permalink
Susan Hawk was the first woman elected as Dallas County district attorney. She also suffers from depression.
Jamie Thompson D Magazine Nov 2015 40min Permalink
Struggling with depression and thoughts of suicide, Army officer Lawrence Franks went AWOL. Five years later, he reappeared as Christopher Flaherty, a member of the French Foreign Legion who served three tours in Africa. Then he was court-martialed.
Janet Reitman Rolling Stone Sep 2015 35min Permalink
A life with bipolar disorder.
Jaime Lowe New York Times Magazine Jun 2015 Permalink
“We still have retrograde ideas about how pregnant women should feel, and we need to revise them — not only for depressed women but for all women.”
Andrew Solomon New York Times Magazine May 2015 25min Permalink
A novelist’s memoir of depression, whose “intrinsic malevolence” as a disease brought him close to suicide.
William Styron Vanity Fair Dec 1989 40min Permalink
A lonely housesitter makes himself at home in slightly inappropriate ways.
"He’s in the master bedroom. There are no decorations—no photos hung on the wall or in frames on the dresser, no other artwork, no decals like Alice bought and had Ben stick-apply to the walls of their own bedroom when they’d first moved into the neighborhood themselves. There’s only the dresser along the wall, with a vanity mirror and neatly organized jewelry atop, and a nightstand on each side of the bed. Neither has anything on it but books, but Ben can immediately distinguish his from hers from the selection, the way they are stacked. Without thinking, without being able to help himself, Ben goes to Helen’s side of the bed and opens the drawer."
Aaron Burch Green Mountains Review Oct 2014 25min Permalink
Current personal problems are tied to racial issues from years past.
"Helen Conley knew this story: When Maxwell Conley was sixteen and in high school, with a bad attitude like many of us have, two young members of the Black Panther Party saved his life. It happened because a recent veteran of the war in Vietnam woke up one morning believing he was still in the jungle. Adrenaline began pumping through his body at impressive levels. He didn't have a gun, but he found an oak baseball bat in the alley behind his mother's apartment building. He laced up his combat boots. He stormed down the street until he came to the high school. He kicked open the doors of the school, and came through the hallway breathing hard, fists clenched around the bat. It was seventh period. The hallway was quiet. Around the corner came Maxwell Conley, cutting class as was his custom. He was not sober. He was wondering why Kay Svenson wouldn't pay attention to him in art class. He was admiring his long curly hair in the reflection of the fire extinguisher case mounted on the wall. His Converse sneakers flapped open and his unwashed sock came through. The Vietnam veteran, only a few years older than Maxwell Conley, met him in the hallway, and wasted no time."
Madeline ffitch The Collagist Sep 2014 25min Permalink
A woman travels in a band on the way to their next show.
"With raised eyebrows, Jay crouched down, turned his hand up, and motioned wide. From the flat top, we could see oil rigs in the distance. A pair of buzzards looped in a slow figure eight. I wondered what kind of body lay out there on that red expanse, just out of my eye line, drying out under the sun into those bleached desert bones people put on fireplaces. They disgusted me, sure, but something about them called for touch, to feel those natural cracks in skulls, how similar we are to porcelain on the inside. Once we lose our connective tissue, we can show softer to those that put their hands on us."
Beth Gilstrap Fwriction Review Sep 2014 10min Permalink
An excerpt from Luna's as-of-now unpublished novel: a look at discontentment in Portland.
"I wasn't sleeping well, is the thing. I would go to bed at midnight where Tom was nearly always already asleep, and I'd lie awake until one or so when I'd finally fall asleep, only to wake up at 5 a.m.—always five am, like a bell clanging—seized with some unnamed panic. Panic gripping my throat, tightening my chest. Like waking up mid-heart attack morning after morning. I would get up, pull on my clothes, get out. Our apartment got so small and close like that, the walls closing in on me and I would need to get out. Just to breathe, to settle myself down some. Miles I would walk, winding my way past rain-faded hulking warehouses and auto shops and lumber yards and then I'd push past them, just me and the trucks and the highway sounds and the river."
Cari Luna Everyday Genius Aug 2014 10min Permalink