October is National Depression Education and Awareness Month

Did you know that the month of October is National Depression Education and Awareness Month? Here at Cranthorpe Millner Publishers, we think this is an important month to promote. Depression shouldn’t be a taboo subject. We should speak about it openly and freely. This way we can all move forward to help and support each other.

Depression can be extremely exhausting to manage and fight on your own. The aim of National Depression Education and Awareness Month is to learn about the signs, symptoms and support available for depression. It’s a month where we learn how to look out for others. The month also reminds us that it is a sign of hope and strength to ask for help.

If you want to learn a little more about depression, we have three incredible reads for you. These all talk about depression and how it affects a person’s life. These books will help those with depression understand that they are not alone. The recommended books will also teach others how to look out for signs of depression amongst their loved ones and friends.

Cuts and Bruises by Kelly O’Flaherty

“I’d imagine my family finding me; would they be surprised? Devastated? Relieved? Would I survive? Would they find me just at the last second, resuscitate me at the vital moment before I could slip away? I could see their angry faces flashing before my eyes, screaming selfish, selfish, selfish, how selfish can you be?”

Life has become banal and monotonous for 16-year-old Samantha Ward. The blade she drags across her skin is the only thing that makes her feel alive, that makes her feel real.

With the death of her beloved grandmother and the rejection of her best friend, Samantha falls ever further into the grips of her darkness, every day adding to the collection of marks on her skin.

Desperate and tired of waiting for change, Samantha ventures out into the rain and finds herself drawn to the graveyard nearby. She stumbles across her classmate Michael Gallagher with a noose swaying behind him. Choosing careful words, Samantha convinces him to leave it behind.

With an unspoken bond between them, a friendship blooms. But as Samantha struggles to keep her habit a secret, she realises that Michael is hiding his own secrets too.

Edges of Me by Gaye Poole

Two female friends, Jenny and Claire, first meet as psychiatric nurse and patient.

Both are searching for their identity.

Claire has undiagnosed borderline personality disorder and wants to be ‘more like Jenny’. However, Jenny has her own issues, and wishes to be more like Claire.

An intense, interdependent friendship develops over decades. Will these two women come out whole in the end? Or are the edges too blurred between them for either to survive?

The Wrong Story by L J Jenner

Who are you without your story?

And what do you do when someone steals yours?

How do you know that the stories you tell yourself, about yourself, are true?  Where do they come from?  What if they are actually based on distorted memories?

Maggie is newly qualified, full of self-doubt and trying desperately to pretend that the dark tragedy in her past never happened.  When a client, remarkably like her younger self, arrives for therapy, her carefully constructed defences are put to the test.  Add in a second client with a possibly violent past, then a third preparing to face his childhood abuser in court and the stage is set for Maggie’s emotional barricades to be well and truly breached.

L J Jenner, a psychotherapist for 15 years, blends fiction and fact in this captivating story of identity, loss, grief and healing. Challenging themes are handled with delicate compassion, enabling The Wrong Story to deliver an intensely emotional but nonetheless enthralling experience.  Readers are given a rare insight into what happens behind the closed doors of the therapy room and, crucially, into what goes on inside a therapist’s head. The clients may be fictional, but the psychological theory and science are both real and astonishing.

This October, for National Depression Education and Awareness Month, keep an eye out for your friends, family, loved ones and colleagues. If you’re worried about them, drop them a text or offer to meet for a coffee. If you’re struggling with depression, don’t be afraid to ask for help. You are not alone.