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What it argues
Reasons to Stay Alive is Matt Haig's account of the severe depression and anxiety disorder he experienced in his mid-twenties, and how he survived it, returned to functioning, and eventually to something he could call a good life. The book is partly memoir — Haig describes the acute crisis, the months of near-total incapacitation, and the gradual recovery — and partly a direct address to the reader who may be in or near a similar place. Haig is explicit about both purposes, and the directness is the book's defining quality.
The crisis arrived suddenly. Haig was twenty-four, living in Ibiza, and by his account had no particular history that would predict it. He describes standing on a cliff and understanding that he wanted to jump, and having enough residual hold on himself not to. He returned to England with his then-girlfriend, later wife, Andrea, and spent months barely able to leave the house. He describes the specific texture of that period — the inability to read, to think, to be alone, to feel that a future existed — with precision that will be familiar to anyone who has experienced severe depression, and that may be clarifying for people who haven't.
What it gets right
- 1.
Severe depression and anxiety are not character failings or symptoms of weak character. They are illnesses, and they respond — unevenly but genuinely — to treatment and time.
- 2.
The experience of depression is not well-described by sadness. For Haig, it was terror, paralysis, and the complete absence of a felt future.
- 3.
Recovery is possible, even from the depth Haig describes. The book's most important claim is also its simplest: it got better.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Matt Haig is a British novelist and author. He has written fiction for adults and children, including The Midnight Library, The Humans, and the Radish series for young readers. Reasons to Stay Alive, published in 2015, began as notes he had written to himself during his recovery from depression and has since sold millions of copies worldwide. He writes openly about mental health on social media and has become one of the more prominent popular voices on the subject.
