William Styron, preeminent author of Sophie’s Choice and The Confessions of Nat Turner, helped bring the subject of depression out of the shadows and addressed the stigma still attached to it twenty-three years later. It is still considered one of the most vivid personal accounts of this debilitating illness.
From The Guardian UK, 2011:
“Twenty years ago today, the American novelist William Styron’s short but devastating memoir about his depression and near-suicide, Darkness Visible, was published in the UK. In it, he described depression as “a disorder of mood, so mysteriously painful and elusive in the way it becomes known to the self – to the mediating intellect – as to verge close to being beyond description.” ~Chris Cox
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