Reasons To Stay Alive

Our Review

I chose to read Reasons to Stay Alive after listening to Matt Haig talking about his latest book Notes on a Nervous Planet at Newark Book Festival last night.

At the age of 24 Matt Haig had his first of many experiences of anxiety and depression, an experience which almost caused him to take his own life.

In Reasons to Stay Alive he explores the realities of his illness and the ways he manages the symptoms in day to day life.

I finished Reasons to Stay Alive in under two hours in the middle of the night when I should have been sleeping whilst my newborn was asleep.

“Thirteen years ago, I knew this couldn’t happen. I was going to die, you see, or go mad.”

At the depth of his depression Matt Haig couldn’t see how he was going to be able to survive the way he was feeling but as he points out depression lies.

“Depression itself isn’t a lie. It is the most real thing I’ve ever experienced. Of course, it is invisible.

To other people, it sometimes seems like nothing at all. You are walking around with your head on fire and no one can see the flames.”

Reasons to Stay Alive is an essential read for anyone wanting to understand depression for themselves or for others. In writing it Matt Haig was both attempting to alleviate his symptoms and aiming to reduce some of the stigma surrounding depression and anxiety by helping people to better understand it.

In the book he argues that everyone experiences the symptoms of depression in a different way – no two people have the same experience.

I wanted to be dead. No. That’s not quite right. I didn’t want to be dead, I just didn’t want to be alive. As a qualified counsellor I noticed this very important distinction – there is a clear distinction between being suicidal and simply wishing you didn’t have to feel whatever you were feeling any longer.

He discusses the fact that suicide is the leading cause of death in men under 35 and worldwide men are three times more likely to kill themselves than women. A lot of this has to do with men not being encouraged to talk about their feelings and to seek help for the symptoms of mental illness.

Matt Haig has this important message for his readers:

“You are no less or more of a man or a woman or a human for having depression than you would be for having cancer or cardiovascular disease or a car accident.”

Depression and other mental health issues are not yet properly understood, and even scientific professionals argue over the causes.

Matt Haig states that one of the things that helped him during his lowest points was reading. He needed them as if they were an addictive substance. One of the things I liked about this point in the book is that one of the books he cited as helping him was a book by one of my favourite author’s – Margaret Atwood.

There is a helpful section on suggestions for further reading at the end of the book.

Reasons to Stay Alive is a through and comprehensive account of depression and its effects and the book has an underlying message of hope.

Our Final Rating...

Sun, 15th July 2018