SINGAPORE: The shame I felt waiting for the psychiatrist in the open lobby of then Adam Road Hospital was piercing. How could I, a CEO, be here with “them” (the other patients)?

This self-stigma and misguided hubris compounded the deep distress from a perfect storm of a shattered marriage, a broken business and a depleted bank account that led me there. 

Now, almost 20 years later, I often cite that seemingly nondescript experience as one of my most cherished achievements in life - not just for the courage and humility I mustered to seek professional help but also for the compassion and acceptance that I truly gave myself for the first time.

To be clear, I am not here to dismiss the gravity of my or anyone’s lived experience with mental health challenges, nor am I saying that depression is a blessing in a New Age twist of turning lemons into lemonade.

The human mind is a lot more complicated than that, and clinical depression is a real phenomenon where help must be sought.

My brush with depression, however, led me to explore what got me to that deep dark place in the first place, and helped me in ways I didn’t expect.

Were there upsides to my being down? i01

• amp
• #039
• i01
• Depression
• Commentary