The Telegraph.

Podcasts.

So this week I am super super excited and honored to have as our guests on the podcast the brilliant

Matt hey hello Matt. Hello Briany.

Matt wrote Reasons to Stay Alive which how many people have bought that book?

More than I have bought any of of the books I think I think yeah it's like in this

country about court of a million or something that's incredible and what about in other

countries well I've had it I don know. It was done quite well in Germany and all the depressed Scandinavian countries it's done quite well in. Yeah, it's interesting actually internationally. For instance, I had to do an event in Sri Lanka about reasons stay alive but just

Depression and mental health in general and it's not officially recognized as a thing. I mean mental illness

You know a lot of people are in denial about it totally there and it's not officially recognized. I don't really have mental hospitals in the way we have mental hospitals. But it was like, you know, lots of people turned out. It was one of my biggest events and loads of personal stories and it's so emotional doing it somewhere where they had never really given the forum to talk about it.

So reasons to stay alive is your story of your

experience with major depressive disorder. Well I'm going to start quickly we start

each podcast we'll get back to that obviously it being a podcast about mental health we start each podcast, we'll get back to that obviously, it being a podcast about mental health.

We start each podcast by asking everyone how they really are right now because we ask that

question a million times a day and we all go, yeah fine fine because I guess if we all

did really say actually I'm feeling really crap today we'd all be there all

day like all right I've got a music to get to now but how are you really I'm actually by my standards I'm pretty good. I'm in my sort of top 30% of days. I'm really quite good because work-wise I'm in one of those rare patches where I've finished something so

writing books you know most of the time I'm writing novels you rarely get that sense

or satisfaction because you're not completing anything.

So I've just completed something.

So that is always psychologically quite nice.

I've never, ever since I became ill,

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