Joy Interrupted

Geoffrey Lilburne is a Minister of the Uniting Church in Australia, a theologian and poet, with qualifications in counselling and professional supervision. Joy Interrupted is his memoir of a life lived with depression. It is an honest, occasionally harrowing account of his experiences of depression and anxiety that affected his private and professional life; and of the various treatments offered to help him live with the difficult stresses of mental illness. It details what worked, and what didn’t; what professional advice proved useful, and what was less effective. It records the development of medications and therapies that were available in his lifetime as well as the attitudes and reactions of others to his condition. It traces his life as student and academic, in Australia and the United States, his growth and development as theologian and minister, his work as a senior member of the Uniting Church’s Assembly team and significant failures at various times in his personal life as well as in the academy and ministry. But more significantly, it relates how his discovery of prayer and spirituality enriched his life and helped him find ways of negotiating the various difficult symptoms of mental illness. His experience encourages him to share his insights and to offer to others realistic ways of coping with depression. He offers practical guidelines about the illness and its treatment and asks questions about how we night might move towards a holistic understanding of a condition that impacts brain chemistry, social interaction and the very spirit of a person. From a holistic definition of depression, he points to ways in which the treatment of the condition might need to be reshaped in practice. Based on the memoir and his reflections on his life, he traces a pathway to the rediscovery of joy that will help others as they seek to live with their depression and rediscover their joy.