JK ROWLING became so depressed as a struggling single mother in Edinburgh that she thought of taking her own life, she has revealed in an interview.
Living alone in a flat in Leith after the breakdown of her first marriage, trying to write what would become the first Harry Potter book, she had "suicidal thoughts".
Rowling was referred for cognitive behavioural therapy, an increasingly popular
treatment for depression that teaches how to counter negative thoughts, by her GP. It was her young daughter Jessica who kept her "grounded", she said.
"Mid-twenties life circumstances were poor and I really plummeted. The thing that made me go for help … was probably my daughter. She was something that earthed me, grounded me, and I thought, this isn't right, this can't be right, she cannot grow up with me in this state."
Ms Rowling made the remarks in a rare interview with reporter Adeel Amini for the Edinburgh University Student magazine.
Mr Amini did not return e-mails seeking comment yesterday on his "scoop", which was picked up by by the media yesterday.
But his article told how he bumped into Ms Rowling, who fiercely protects her and her family's privacy, in an Edinburgh coffee shop, and asked for an interview. Four months later he got a "private audience" with the writer.
The stories of how Ms Rowling would take her daughter to Edinburgh coffee shops, making a single cup last so she could write somewhere warm, are part of Harry Potter myth.
In the days before her record-breaking books would make her rich beyond her dreams, JK Rowling has described looking through the windows of posh New Town houses and seeing another world.
The Dementors, chilling and horrific creatures that first appeared in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, suck all joy and drive from their victims and take them into the depths of despair. They are widely seen as a fictional version of depression.
Ms Rowling has never denied her early struggle with depression. She recently wept when she returned to her Leith apartment for a television documentary. But she has never admitted sinking so low.
It happened after her separation from her first husband, Jorge Arantes, a Portuguese journalist. She said her usual GP was away and a replacement doctor sent her away, telling her to speak to the practice nurse if she ever felt "a bit low".
"We're talking suicidal thoughts here, we're not talking 'I'm a little bit miserable'," she said. "Two weeks later I had a phone call from my regular GP who had looked back over the notes … She called me back in and I got counselling through her.
"She absolutely saved me because I don't think I would have had the guts to go and do it twice.
I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never," she added. "What's to be ashamed of? I went through a really rough time and I am quite proud that I got out of that."
Ms Rowling said she had "leanings towards depression" from an early age, and was in counselling for nine months. "It was absolutely invaluable. It worked for me so obviously I'm very 'pro' it."
ILLNESS THAT HAUNTED MANY WRITERS' LIVESLEO Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, Franz Kafka and Joseph Conrad are among the many writers said to have suffered from depression.
Ernest Hemingway, who won the Nobel Prize for literature, suffered from the severe mood swings of manic depression, and was treated with electroshock therapy. He killed himself with a shotgun in 1961, three weeks short of his 62nd birthday.
Charles Dickens displayed all the signs of clinical depression, experts now believe.
Sylvia Plath suffered extreme depression, and nearly killed herself at college with sleeping pills. Married to fellow poet Ted Hughes, after spending the winter in a small London flat, cold, ill and short of money, with two small children, she used a gas oven to take her own life.
F Scott Fitzgerald once wrote: "Every act of life, from the morning toothbrush to the friend at dinner, became an effort. I hated the night when I couldn't sleep and I hated the day because it went toward night."
The full article contains 709 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
