David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
J.K. Rowling's dark days before Harry Potter
by Vicki Hyman, Star-Ledger
Monday March 24, 2008
Before Harry Potter made her a household name, J.K. Rowling contemplated suicide, she tells a student journalist in her adopted hometown of Edinburgh.
Elaborating for the first time on the depression that gripped her when she was a struggling writer and single mom, Rowling says the she "really plummeted" after she split with her first husband in her mid-20s, according to the interview with Adeel Amini, whom Rowling met in an Edinburgh coffee shop a few months ago.
"We're talking suicidal thoughts here, we're not talking 'I'm a little bit miserable,'" Rowling says. She says she went to see her doctor, but she was away, and her replacement didn't appear to take her concerns seriously. When her doctor returned, she called Rowling and suggested she undergo counseling.
"She absolutely saved me because I don't think I would have had the guts to go and do it twice," Rowling says, according to an account of the interview in Britain's Telegraph newspaper.
Rowling spent nine months in cognitive behavior therapy. "I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never," Rowling says. "What's to be ashamed of? I went through a really rough time, and I am quite proud that I got out of that."
by Vicki Hyman, Star-Ledger
Monday March 24, 2008
Before Harry Potter made her a household name, J.K. Rowling contemplated suicide, she tells a student journalist in her adopted hometown of Edinburgh.
Elaborating for the first time on the depression that gripped her when she was a struggling writer and single mom, Rowling says the she "really plummeted" after she split with her first husband in her mid-20s, according to the interview with Adeel Amini, whom Rowling met in an Edinburgh coffee shop a few months ago.
"We're talking suicidal thoughts here, we're not talking 'I'm a little bit miserable,'" Rowling says. She says she went to see her doctor, but she was away, and her replacement didn't appear to take her concerns seriously. When her doctor returned, she called Rowling and suggested she undergo counseling.
"She absolutely saved me because I don't think I would have had the guts to go and do it twice," Rowling says, according to an account of the interview in Britain's Telegraph newspaper.
Rowling spent nine months in cognitive behavior therapy. "I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never," Rowling says. "What's to be ashamed of? I went through a really rough time, and I am quite proud that I got out of that."
