An alternative, half-cynical and somewhat black-humoured ‘self-help’ guide to dealing with suicidal thoughts and depression among the deeply imaginative, society’s most promising and yet most undervalued asset.

This short guide caters to ‘imaginative pessimists’ – creative cynics, ‘tortured artists’ – those with rich imaginations and drive to create, who absorb themselves in fiction and escapism, yet who deeply struggle with finding enjoyment and meaning in the mundanity of reality. It is advice for the fantasists who would rather live in their head than in the real world, and so often suffer from depression and disillusion, to point of being led at times to suicidal thoughts.

It is about finding these people a reason to live.

Readers will find the short format and personal approach immediately accessible and appealing. How Not to Kill Yourself was written with no age range in mind, simply for the depressed.

The best piece of literature I have ever read about depression...and I've read A LOT. Required reading for those with depression and those who know people with depression (which most people, I believe, fall into one or both categories).

There were so many things I appreciated about this book: the honesty, the forthright discussion of major depression and suicide, and the perspective-giving humour. All these aspects were refreshing; all made me feel that I had at last picked up a book that accurately described the experience of living with depression.

[Set Sytes] knows that sugar-coating depression, and force-feeding the reader sappy positive sh*t, as what is done in many other self-help books, is unhelpful. He doesn't want us to get rid of our cynicism. And that's what, for me, makes this "survival guide" so refreshing.

This is probably the greatest "self-help" book I have ever read. Why? Because it was easy to read, short, hilarious, not at all condescending, and full of a giant range of helpful strategies to combat even the worst thoughts depression, BPD, and anxious creativity can throw at me... [Set's] voice is such a joy and the presentation is so disarming...

The idea of staying alive not because I like me or because I like the world... but simply out of sheer spite?



At the moment this is really working for me, when nothing else was.