“When one considers all the evidence, depression seems less like a disorder where the brain is operating in a haphazard way, or malfunctioning. Instead, depression seems more like the vertebrate eye–an intricate, highly organized piece of machinery that performs a specific function.”

In a sense, leaving a depression behind may be tantamount to acknowledging that a particular line of enquiry has become saturated: that there is nothing new that can be learned about the problem, and that further rumination, or repetition of the initial problematising impulse, will simply send you off on another circuit around a well-worn groove. The trick is to associate the sense of futility this realisation induces with the depression itself - pointless to carry on like this - rather than with, say, life in general, which is a larger and more various affair. Try paying serious, repeated, delving and sifting attention to something else…