One Year to Change My Brain
This year, I badly need to get a grip on my mental health. But then, I have been telling myself that for most of the past ten years – or perhaps nearer twenty. I am not alone. According to the World Health Organisation, nearly a billion people worldwide live with a mental illness. The commonest is depression, affecting around 300 million people. However, I suspect that most people in poorer or war-torn countries aren’t worrying about their mental health itself, so much as the specific things they are depressed or anxious about, such as ‘My entire family were killed when the country next door bombed our town,’ or, ‘How can I feed my family when all our crops are dying of thirst?’ I am hugely privileged compared with many people. I am happily married to PDB11 , a wonderful man who, for reasons I don’t understand, thinks I am a wonderful person too. We live in Somerset, one of the most beautiful parts of the world that I know. I have mostly go...