The story

For the first 45 of her 50 years of living, Bonnie Neighbour used to wake up feeling sorry to be alive.

"Even when I wasn't actually depressed, I would open my eyes in the morning and wonder if there wasn't something else; I would have preferred an alternative to being alive," she says.

She recalls being depressed as a young child. In her late teens, she started having mood problems that eventually escalated into clinical depression.

"At some point, I was suicidal. I would suffer cycles of depression and mania," Neighbour said. "I wouldn't sleep for days, and the less sleep I would get, the more revved up I'd become, and then I would make irrational decisions and act out. Then I'd alternate with serious depressive episodes.

"At one time, for nine months, I wasn't even able to leave the house [because of depression]." At age 30, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Read full article »

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