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Nell Casey

Freelance Writer, Producer
New York, New York

Topic: Role of social support in depression and the experience of family caregiving

Published Work:

My Sister, Lost and Found
My Great-Great-Grandfather died in Butlers, a hospital for the "alcoholically insane." My great-uncle was institutionalized for importing a château, stone by stone, from France to Long Island without any money to pay for it. A few years ago, my cousin explained to me during a manic episode that he'd chosen to create a safer, more religious universe without technology (except for rotary phones).

Unholy Ghost is a unique collection of essays about depression that, in the spirit of William Styron's Darkness Visible, finds vivid expression for an elusive illness suffered by more than one in five Americans today. Unlike any other memoir of depression, however, Unholy Ghost includes many voices and depicts the most complete portrait of the illness.

From Britney Spears to Angelina Jolie to robber CEOs, narcissists are selfish and maddening -- and yet we just can't get enough of them.

Thirty million people today care for ailing family members in their own homes-a number that will increase dramatically over the next decade as baby boomers enter old age, as soldiers return home from war mentally and physically wounded, as medical advances extend lives and health insurance fails to cover them.

When I first met William Styron, in the summer of 2001, he was frail, barely back on his feet after a brutal bout with depression. I met him and his wife, Rose, at a bookstore where we read from Unholy Ghost, a collection of essays on depression I'd edited, and to which both Styron had contributed.