There is no question that Tim Farrington's A Hell of Mercy is an accurate depiction of depression. In fact, it is such an accurate depiction of clinical depression it is nigh unto unreadable. But people interested in depression either for either person or professional reason, it's worth getting through, even if it leaves you, well, depressed.

A Hell of Mercy presents depression as a spiritual problem in addition to a mental health difficultly, which is not an uncommon model, really, even in very clinical books. The difference between Harringon's discussion of what the Saints have called “The Dark Night of the Soul” and other discussions of depression as spiritual condition is that Farrington seems aware that the Dark Night of the Soul and severe clinical depression may co-exist and in some cases, in some people may look like or be similar processes, but that they are not necessarily one and the same. This keeps Farrington away from the dangerous victim blaming  in many allegedly spiritual texts; as a depression and possibly (it's not clear) suicide survivor, Farrington is all too well aware of how little about depression is choice, is lack of will.

Farrington is also exceeding honest with himself. Rarely in first person accounts of depression do you read such stark realizations on the toll depression takes outside the individual suffering. “Depression saps relationships” he writes, “ untreated depression eventually destroys them. It may be harder to live with a person who is irredeemably miserable than it is to be the focus of such misery yourself.” Seeing as depression seemed to have played a part in the dissolution of all the relationships he describes, this is clearly hard won, or perhaps in the author's case, hard lost knowledge.