The Midnight Library Sparknotes

The book that I chose to read was The Midnight Library written by Matt Haig (2020). This book portrays how strongly depression can negatively affect an individual throughout their life and how multiple life events can lead people to believing the only option is suicide. I believe that people who are depressed will often suffer in silence and decide to not speak up and get the help that they need. Matt Haig does an excellent job of bringing to light to a topic that is often overlooked. He accomplishes this by writing about a fictional character named Nora Seed. Seed, a thirty-five-year-old woman who suffers from depression, was left feeling hopeless with no escape from the misery she had been facing after a series of unfortunate events. This

The DSM-5 symptoms that Nora exhibited were sadness, lack of motivation, guilt, loss of interest/pleasure, and suicidal thoughts. The criteria for Major Depressive Disorder must contain five or more symptoms for at least two weeks (Durand et al., 2019). It is difficult to tell if Nora had actually experienced Major Depressive Disorder, as we do not know how long she had been experiencing the five symptoms before her suicide attempt. It seems that these symptoms have been displayed consistently over the course of her life, therefore I do believe she has met the criteria for this disorder. If not Major Depressive Disorder, she could also have been diagnosed with Persistent Depressive Disorder. Persistent Depressive Disorder contains most of the same symptoms as Major Depressive Disorder, but in a less severe manner. This depression lasts for at least two years in adults (Durand et al., 2019), which is what I believe was Nora’s case. It is difficult to make a clear diagnosis for Nora, as we only know so many details from what we have read about

This book impressed me, as I believe that this disorder is one that can be hard to talk about In my opinion, this book did not downplay depression and showed the true result that happens way too often, suicide. Nora had plenty of life events starting when she was younger that contributed to her poor mental health in her later years in life. I believe that this is common in many people and allows the reader to believe that there is a life worth living, no matter the circumstance. Unfortunately, in real life, we do not get chances at different lives, as Nora did. In the end of the book, no matter how much Nora regretted certain decisions in her life and wished she could undo them, she still wouldn’t have chosen any other life than the one that she had been living previously and finally found peace in her own life (Haig,