I've been depressed for about 15 years. I'm still dealing with it and I'm still getting anxiety attacks ... I only found out that I was really depressed like two years ago and when they diagnosed me, and I sat down with my shrink, that's when they actually told me that I've been depressed since my daughter was born 15 years ago

If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing.

depression, when it finally came to me, was in fact no stranger, not even a visitor totally unannounced; it had been tapping at my door for decades.

At the time, my family and I didn’t know I was suffering from depression. I was a very quiet child who was always just in the background at school. I was withdrawn and didn’t really have friends, but I was focused on getting school done

I knew I had a problem, and I couldn't admit it.

Did I suffer from depression? Yes, a little, from time to time. Yes. … I'm not as depressed as I was. I get depressed now and then but not very much anymore. … At the height of it it was just God-awful. It was really bad.

I’ve been going through depression in my life and people don’t know this. They see me smile and play table tennis, but people can’t tell what I’m going through.

I struggled with depression a lot in those years, with my own things but I also think some of it was the character. Because sometimes I think I would forget it's not me

They lived in a world where mental illness was equated with weakness, and shame, and as a result, I suffered until I was in my thirties.*

Ever since puberty, ever since I was 11 or 12, I've had cyclical depression. That's something that has been a defining feature of my life as an adult. It's manageable. But it's real. And it doesn't take away from my joy or my work or my energy, but coping with depression is something that is part of the everyday way that I live and have lived for as long as I can remember.

For three years I was immersed in a depression, I did not know how to assimilate the loss of my voice, which was a reality.

I was depressed for a long time. If you’re depressed long enough, it’s almost a comfort, a state of mind that you’ve made peace with because you’ve been in it so long. It’s a very selfish world.

I was a depressive and self-destructive alcoholic, but I was lucky enough to meet the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and be rescued by it 15 years ago.

I spent the first fourteen years of my life convinced that my looks were hideous. Adolescence is painful for everyone, I know, but mine was plain weird.