With my debut book Beating Hospital Grade Depression and Anxiety: A Lived Experience Guide to Recovering Your Body, Mind and Spirit launching this week, I thought it would be helpful to give a quick fly-through of it for potential readers.

Part 1 The Breakdown

This first part of the book sets the scene, giving a first-hand account of how I came to be in the mental state I was in when I was admitted to hospital. Chapter 1: My Pre-Diagnosis Roller-Coaster tells my story of this three-year period that involved the interplay of external events, problematic religious beliefs and a lack of mental health awareness. 

In Chapter 2: A Positive Psychiatric Hospital Experience, I describe being hospitalised, diagnosed and starting my recovery journey, and I discuss how important the quality psychiatric hospital care I received was to turning around my situation.

Some quotes from Part 1:

“Although I did seek help for what I was going through and began seeing a psychiatrist that our family doctor recommended, unfortunately he (the psychiatrist) wasn’t a very good one.”

“The catch-22 in all of this was that because I feared saying something unforgivable, I could not articulate to anyone what was troubling me so much about these religious beliefs.”

“Over the next several months, I consistently felt happy, not needing to sleep much and yet still having plenty of energy. My speech lost its anxiety-induced stutter, and the religious concepts that had been troubling me seemed to disappear. As with so much that happened during this pre-diagnosis period, I would learn later that what I was experiencing was hypomania.”

Part 2 The Body

Chapter 3: Nutrition, Chapter 4: Exercise, and Chapter 5: Sleep cover these three essential building blocks of physical well-being and brain health, including commentary on how they played a crucial role in my recovery and continue that role in my ongoing well-being. 

Chapter 6: Medication and Side Effects includes useful tips I have learned to cope with side effects like drowsiness and constipation, and how lifestyle and diet impact the severity of these difficulties. 

Some quotes from Part 2:

“Notably, 50 percent of dopamine and 90 percent of serotonin, key neurotransmitters influencing mood, are produced in the gut. This underscores the profound impact of gut health on mental and emotional states.”

“When it wasn’t basketball or soccer season, I did not exercise much. When I look back, I can see it was no coincidence that my deepest depressive troughs were during the sporting off-seasons.”

“The blue light emitted from electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, and computers can suppress the production of the melatonin hormone and interfere with your ability to fall asleep. This is especially the case with social media platforms’ bright white screens, which I consider a definite no-no in bed or directly beforehand.”

Part 3 The Mind

In this part of the book, I discuss the key learnings from my many years of therapy and what have been the most practical insights into improving and strengthening my mindset to make it resilient during life’s inevitable ups and downs.

Although depression and anxiety often overlap, I address them separately in Chapter 7: Six Strategies to Counter Depression and Chapter 8: Six Strategies to Counter Anxiety to highlight what has helped me manage and overcome each of these conditions.

Some quotes from Part 3:

“It is natural for best-case scenarios to dominate expectations for the routine aspects of life. Average-case scenarios are a much better guide.”

“To avoid being overwhelmed, break down whatever you are doing into pieces and just focus on the next step. It doesn’t matter your challenge—there is always a next step.”

“I recommend going against the grain of the culture in which many of us live, which promotes the idea that having a crazy busy, run-off-my-feet lifestyle is to be admired and even striven for.”

Part 4 The Spirit 

I wrote this part because spiritual beliefs and practices are often overlooked, if not completely ignored, in so much of what is out there about mental health and wellness. This is despite their importance to a great many people (myself included), and the potential on offer for those trying to recover like I was after my ordeal.

In Chapters 9, 10 and 11 I share about the place that prayer and worship has had in my recovery and ongoing well-being, and demonstrate the mental health benefits that they can offer even if you don’t consider yourself religious. Chapter 12: Inspiration is all about how to harness the power of a whole variety of accessible things such as music, entertainment, relationship, periodic things to look forward to and regular means of enjoyment. 

Some quotes from Part 4:

“Prayer is just as powerful when it comes to dealing with painful things in our lives. Maybe you didn’t grow up in a loving environment, or your current circumstances are not so good. My experience has been that prayer during adversity or in working through difficulties from the past has been especially powerful and a source of healing.”

“If you encounter something that troubles you when reading the Bible, don’t keep it to yourself. Talk about it with people you trust, and remember that your faith is meant to be a positive part of your life. If it is having the opposite effect, then something is going wrong.”

“I mentioned that you can find inspiration in places you don’t expect. The best example from my own experience was how I came to be awe-inspired by a painting, even though I am not someone with a natural appreciation for artwork.”

There you have it. I hope you find it to be a good read. Go to the book’s Amazon page or download the audiobook for free here!

Photo by Manoj Balotia on Unsplash