Perfectly Hidden Depression by Margaret Robinson Rutherford

'I never thought about writing a book - literally, if you'd told me 10 years ago that I would be writing a book, I would have said you were crazy,' she says. That Rutherford found herself authoring a book at all came as a complete surprise to her, she says, but it started with baby steps that slowly accelerated over the years. It's what I call a 'syndrome,' which is a group of behaviors that are often found together, kind of like codependency.' No one is calling me to ask me to give input to the. I didn't know there was a name for this.' 'They were saying, 'How did you figure this out? I've never heard about this.' One Fayetteville woman - who I immediately emailed back - said, 'I was going to hurt myself soon, but now I'm going to go home instead and talk to my family. 'Now remember, these are people who are hiding, right?' marvels Rutherford, who was gratified - if a bit overwhelmed - at the response. When the Huffington Post re-published the article with her email address attached, she woke up the next morning with somewhere around 200 emails in her inbox. When she published a blog post about how depression manifests in perfectionists, the post went viral. When Rutherford began mulling over the concept of this hidden depression, she had already become a noted blogger of mental health issues at and a columnist for media sites like the Huffington Post. But the truth is that your perfectionism ends up fueling your depression further - and so the cycle continues.'

'And if you're a perfectionist, admitting that you have a real problem with depression can be extremely difficult. 'Many of us were raised to believe that mental illness of any kind is a weakness, or worse - a sign of failure,' says the blurb on the back of the book. Thus Rutherford's exploration of 'perfectly hidden depression' began. 'And I began trying to look for it more help the people who came to me with that.'

'She was really the first person that I began to recognize, 'Wait a minute - this particular presentation of depression just doesn't show itself in the same way,'' says Rutherford. When Rutherford went to check on her client at her home, she was shocked and dismayed to discover that the woman was attempting to die by suicide. Thank goodness she followed her instincts.

Perfectly Hidden Depression by Margaret Robinson Rutherford