Sarah is a 20-year-old student with a history of depression as a teenager. "I used to cry a lot and felt awful, especially at this time of the year," she recalls.
She went to college and got through the first and second years without any problems. However, in the autumn of her third year, she says that "everything went wrong. I had no concentration and cried my way through the Christmas period". Sarah started to drink heavily and had sleep difficulties. She also lost a lot of weight.
A hospital admission followed, where she was put on major tranquillisers. She began cognitive behavioural therapy while in hospital, but it was not until she was discharged and began to attend regular sessions as an outpatient that she could see some light at the end of the tunnel.
"I began to feel better. I worked hard at filling in the mood sheets and keeping a recovery journal," she says. She found this an excellent therapy. The structure of CBT gave her power over her negative thoughts. The following extract from her recovery journal was written just as she started to feel better:
"Tonight I feel quite relaxed. I think part of this is because I was alone for most of the day and I got something done, which made me feel productive. I wonder where my feelings are hiding tonight, because it's unlike me to write so much factual stuff. "I'd love it if one day I were to sit down and put pen to paper, producing pages and pages about my feelings. I'd love to unblock parts of me that are so afraid of opening. . . I'd like to know what's there. I'd like to see what's hiding inside. I don't want to always be afraid of holding these feelings back. I want to let them live inside me."
Now, Sarah accepts that bad days are actually good days. If she feels down for three or four days in a row, she takes out her journal and writes down her automatic thoughts and her feelings.
"I start taking baby steps again," she says. Now that she is well, this might only happen once in three months. "I now trust CBT as a treatment for my condition."
Later in her recovery journal, Sarah describes the road to recovery:
"Recovery takes time. It takes all the time you've got. It starts when you realise that you are depressed and you are willing to change how you feel. And it's that will that keeps you going. It vanishes every so often, but reappears so gently at times, and so strongly at others because you really want to be you. You won't be the hidden you who secretly you know is wonderful, but who you're afraid to be in case it doesn't work out.
"But it's taking these risks and allowing yourself time that gets you there. It's not easy to fight with the thoughts that keep you chained to depression. It's a long and difficult struggle, but it's worthwhile."
Sarah's name has been changed.