Well one thing is for sure, we don't choose to be depressed and we can't exactly choose to get out of it. It would be nice if were so, but it doesn't quite work like that.

What we can do is to try to adopt a more positive outlook. This is specific to each one of us. We need to understand where we are looking at things in an unhelpful way, and then to try to correct that.

I find Dr Clay's book very useful and hopeful. There is a link to it from the Sharing Self-Help Ideas Forum. I first encountered it in late 2004 and have read and re-read it since.

The 'Understandings' he gives in the first chapter are priceless. But you really need to think about some of them, I think.

If we can learn to view all behaviour, thought, and feelings as arising from causes then we can stop feeling quite so stuck. Why is it that we're depressed or anxious? Its due to a particular combination of inner and outer conditions arising in space and time, it's not 'just me' in quite the way we think it is.

It's a very strange and detached way of looking at ourselves, looking at ourselves as some sort of experimental subject - 'what does a me experience in a situation like this?' we can ask ourselves.

It seems bizarre, and peverse, but what we really need to do when we're depressed is to experiment with new ways of thinking that offer us a new perspective.

I'm thinking that if we can embrace and accept what we most fear - the truth about ourselves with all of our all-too-human faults and limitations, we can at least be a bit more happy about ourselves.

Self-help author Richard Carlson said a friend of his had an idea for a self-help book: 'I'm not OK, You're not OK, and that's OK"!

One of the great things about PC is that it makes it clear that it's perfectly acceptable to have mental health issues of whatever kind, and of whatever intensity. The thing is that our mental health just is as it is.

If we can accept ourselves then I think we can find at least a little peace and joy no matter what else is going on for us.