Depression has been under the spotlight this week after Robin Williams’ suicide. It’s great that despair – lets call it what it is rather than a medicalised euphemism - and mental ill-health are finally coming out of the dingy little spare room closet for an airing and wonderful that people who are suffering depression are having their voices heard. Talking about how mental ill-health can feel shameful, that there is little parity of esteem (a nice, tight, catchphrase) between the care offered to people with physical illness and people with mental illness is temporarily refreshing. Politicians and policy makers are saying worthy things about how dreadful this and that are and how they’ll make things better.

They're being economical with the truth.

People with chronic illnesses, physical and emotional, are being driven to suicide by the same ministers now saying how awful depression is, something that was recognised by the DWP back in 2012. It's only going to get worse.

It’s not just people at the end of their financial tether that are killing themselves. Successful men, you are killing yourselves at a catastrophic rate.

“We have a series of assumptions about suicide that are explicit and implicit, and they make a toxic mix,” Powell says. “One is that suicide is undertaken by failures: people who have no friends, who spend all their time in their room, who have something wrong with them. Are you going to talk about people close to you who might have taken their own lives if that is what others are thinking? If you say your son has taken his own life, then that means saying he’s a failure too. But when you look at the people who do this it’s quite the reverse - it’s often true that they are admired, well-loved and talented - though they might push themselves extremely hard.”

Take a look at this article:

"The most deadly criticism one could make of modern civilization is that apart from its man-made crises and catastrophes, is not humanly interesting. . . . In the end, such a civilization can produce only a mass man: incapable of spontaneous, self-directed activities: at best patient, docile, disciplined to monotonous work to an almost pathetic degree." Lewis Mumford, 1951

Unhappy women generally medicate and endure, unhappy men kill themselves.

I’m no fan of the Good Old Days when we all lived in each others pockets and did our socialising at the communal launderette or men-only club, but when as a nation we took the decision to vote for personal prosperity people began getting more sad. Now we're reaping that whirlwind. People who bought their council houses find their adult children have nowhere to live. When we all demanded cheap washing machines it was inevitable that manufacturing was going to go abroad. When we decided to treat each other as economic units it can’t come as too much of a surprise when we are also treated not as individual people but as things that make other things function. Like a widget. 

Counselling falls into this trap too. Far too many counsellors join in the scroungers and strivers nonsense. Too many believe that success is a client returning to work, even in the face of a foundational belief that our job is to support the client in discovering their own meaning for their own life.

For a great many people depression is a sign that your life has lost any meaning. A lot of people believe that having a high status job title, two posh cars, a big house and garden owned by the bank, and some nice clothes will mean their life is complete, but if they ever attain all that life remains just as hollow and meaningless as ever.

Look to the US which is 5 or so years ahead of us. If you want that life then do nothing, it’s on its way. You may be interested to learn that the American Dream has been totally debunked: if it were true then immigrant women would be sipping champagne in a swimming pool on a Learjet.

If you’re depressed take yourself seriously. As well as going to the GP and doing all the stuff you already know helps depression, think about what you want to do with your life. It may be that you want to spend more or less time with your children. You might want to spend more time awake, relaxed and communicating with your partner or you might want to get far away from them. You might regret having got on your bike like you were told to at 18, to move far away from your family, who are getting old. You may have to sell your house and move somewhere smaller (If you move out of London this won't be a problem.) you may have to take a significant wage cut. But you really are more than your job title and bank balance.

You don’t need to come to counselling to discover this – though it can be helpful to get some support as you explore your fears, desires and options. But you do need to recognise that something is wrong, understand that you don’t have to do what’s expected of you – even if it’s just you who’s putting you under pressure – and then dare to think of what you genuinely want to do with the rest of your life.

Campaign Against Living Miserably is a charity specifically for men under pressure.

Men! Let us in on the secret! When you reach 15 does someone give you a book that tells you how to abuse women?

I conduct domestic violence counselling assessments in East and West London amongst very disparate groups. The women I see are from all socioeconomic and educational backgrounds and a great many racial and cultural groups but the story they tell is strikingly similar.

He wanted to know where I was and who I was seeing all the time. It became too difficult to see friends so I stopped going out. He would argue endlessly until I agreed with him. It got worse when I was pregnant and when I had the baby he couldn’t stand me looking after her but when she cried he became outraged and demanded I shut her up. He wrecked our home, terrorised the kids,  endlessly stole from me, arrived home unexpectedly because he thought I was having an affair and, when I managed to get a restraining order he ignored it, sits outside the house for hours on end and tries to break in. Sometimes he breaks in and beats me up again. If he gets arrested he's let out and then comes to get me. If he's put in prison I have to move because he has said he will kill me when he gets out.

Today the Director of Public Prosecutions will announce increased numbers of domestic violence convictions.

This good news demonstrates that prosecutors have been listening to and acting on DPP advice. Women’s organisations have been yelling all this from the rooftops for centuries but when the DPP takes it seriously things creak into action.

The bad news is 45% of women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime, that she will endure 33 assaults on average before she reports them, that 54% of rapes are perpetrated by a current or ex-partner and one third of female murder victims are killed by their current or ex-partner. That’s two women a week.

The quality of convictions isn't discussed. 'Conviction' just means that a person is found guilty. A conviction might mean community service or an 8 week sentence. 50% of men convicted of DV are going to continue being violent towards women, very often the woman who gave evidence against them which is why so many women withdraw their evidence. When you hear of a man who kills his children and then himself you can guarantee that DV was part of the dynamic - death is a very real, very possible outcome for women and children in domestic violence situations. An 18 week conviction isn't going to change that.

Rather than consider these figures – and there are many more – a great many people will address violence against women by saying that men also experience domestic violence. They do. Here are the stats: 26% of men experience DV. 10% of that 26% experience more than 4 episode of DV while 90% of the 45% of women experience more than 4 episodes.

Happily, most men do not assault women and are repelled by domestic violence. That’s not something women should be grateful for. We should expect it of all men.