"Feeling sad sometimes is a normal part of being human. But for some people, the sad feelings overtake everything else, leaving them hopeless and empty. The things that used to make them feel happy don't make them feel that way anymore. Having depression is a very common and very serious mental disorder. However, there are ways to fight depression, get treatment, and feel better. The lives of millions of kids are affected by mental illness. And yet...

"Once upon a time there was a Princess. She had everything a little girl could ever want, and she was happy. That is, until the fog came..."--Page [4] cover.

"Abigail has a dark cloud. One day it appears and then it's always with her, taking different shapes. At school, it's a ball of worries following behind her. At ballet class, it's a fog that gets in the way of her grand jet�es. At a birthday party, it's a shadow that takes away her appetite. How can Abigail find a way to step outside her dark cloud when it's always there? And then one day, she has a bright idea. Learning to live with and understand...

"This Close to Happy is the first account to endeavor to tell the story of what it feels to suffer a lifetime's worth of clinical depression from the inside out and from a woman's point of view"-- "Despair is always described as dull," writes Daphne Merkin, "when the truth is that despair has a light all its own, a lunar glow, the color of mottled silver." This Close to Happy--Merkin's rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer...