From the outside, life looked great for Mark Rice-Oxley - an editor on a national newspaper – The Guardian - with a happy marriage and three children. But in 2009, he suffered a major episode of depression that took him away from his work, leaving him reliant on medication and professional help for months. He wrote about his experiences in Underneath the Lemon Tree: A Memoir of Depression and Recovery and says now: life is not a linear chart that goes up. It’s a messy scatter graph of moments and experiences, some joyful, others painful. Here, we talk about:

• preconceptions about mental illness
• triggers and burnout
• being ‘good enough’
• prevention vs cure
• psychological flexibility
• the joys of hobbies (& singing whenever possible…)

Follow Mark @markriceoxley69 on Twitter, see more of his work at https://www.theguardian.com/profile/mark-rice-oxley

Follow Helen on social media @MsHelenRussell and the paperback of How To Be Sad is out now https://bit.ly/howtobesadpaperback - or wherever you get your books.

Thanks as ever to Joel Grove for production and Matt Clacher at HarperCollins – and if you like the podcast, rate, review and subscribe so you never miss an episode.