Overview

What if your depression isn't a broken brain but a reasonable response to crushing circumstances? After decades as a counselling psychologist treating veterans for depression-whilst managing his own-Lee Hopkins made an uncomfortable discovery: his depression lifted not through better medication or therapy, but by moving to Vietnam where his Australian pension suddenly covered a decent life instead of grinding poverty. Same brain. Different circumstances. Completely different mental health outcomes. In this contrarian examination of depression, Hopkins combines academic rigor (1,232+ research citations), clinical expertise, and brutally honest memoir to challenge everything we've been told about mental illness. Drawing on research that rarely makes it into mainstream mental health discourse, he argues that much of what we call depression is actually reasonable, sane responses to unreasonable, insane circumstances-poverty, systemic betrayal, cultural mismatch, and neurodivergent exhaustion in systems designed exclusively for neurotypical brains. This isn't another self-help book promising you can think your way out of material circumstances. Hopkins spent years trying that. It didn't work. What worked was addressing the actual problems: financial stress, sensory overwhelm, cultural expectations that required constant performance, and systems designed to exhaust people into giving up. Diagnosed with AuDHD at sixty-six, Hopkins brings a unique perspective to depression-someone who's experienced it from every angle: as a patient, clinician, researcher, veteran navigating inadequate pensions, and neurodivergent person exhausted from decades of masking. His photography evolution from bleak black-and-white to vibrant colour documents his recovery more honestly than any depression scale. Written with the cosmic humour of Terry Pratchett and the irreverence of someone who's survived systems designed to crush him, this book questions why we medicate reasonable responses to unreasonable circumstances instead of changing the circumstances. It's for anyone who's been told their brain is broken when actually their environment is hostile, their poverty is reasonable grounds for despair, or their neurodivergence requires accommodation, not medication. Fair warning: This book won't make you feel better through positive thinking. But it might help you understand that your struggles are reasonable responses to systems that could be designed differently-if we decided to try.

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