And there's the dean of the disorder, William Styron, who wrote a book called "Darkness Visible" about his experience with depression and breakdown. Having realized that most of the characters in his own books suffered nervous breakdowns, (think Sophie in "Sophie's Choice"), Styron was unaware that he was writing the blueprint for the course that his own life would take. Trying to share a common bond with those who have experienced this phenomenon, and understanding that there is no shame in it, Styron pinpoints the beginning of his breakdown to the loss of his mother at an early age.

But it's not as practical a tome as I would have needed. My experience can serve as a handy guide to those of you out there on the verge. See, I'm like you. I'm a hard worker. And I don't do drugs, drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes. I smoked marijuana three times and did inhale, but never found it intellectually stimulating. I tried therapy three times and, besides feeling smarter than my therapists, thought it was a waste of good money. It was more therapeutic to save the money. I graduated Phi Beta Kappa and have an MFA. I have been a professor of humanities at NYU for the past 18 years.

So when my breakdown crept up at age 35, it was the last thing I ever thought could happen to me. But in retrospect, it could have been predicted. I had lost several close friends in the space of three months; before I could grieve for one, another would be dying. "Multiple grieving syndrome," psychiatrists call it. Holocaust survivors have it. I buried myself in my work. I acted as if their deaths didn't affect me.

At the same time, the person I was dating decided that it was time to leave me. Although I am fine alone, intellectually I could cope with losing friends in death but could not understand somebody just leaving. I started to grieve for all my friends at once. This led to an all-out collapse, or nervous breakdown.

Dr. Clark Sugg, director of clinical services at the William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology in New York, says, "You would be hard pressed to find a definition of a nervous breakdown because it is a term the psychiatric and medical world has not embraced. They use terms like psychotic episode or major depressive event, and for each person it is different, but behind closed doors of the profession a nervous breakdown is an all-out collapse." He went on to quote Carl Jung's definition: "The patient who is sick in mind in the highest and most complex of the mind's functions, and these can hardly be said to belong anymore to the province of medicine."

The American Psychiatric Association defines a "major depressive episode" as one that includes at least five of the following symptoms during a two-week period:

1. Depressed mood most every day
2. Diminished interest or pleasure in almost all activities most every day
3. Significant weight loss or weight gain when not dieting
4. Insomnia or hypersomnia nearly every day
5. Restlessness or slowing down nearly every day
6. Fatigue or loss of energy nearly every day
7. Feelings of worthlessness or excessive guilt nearly every day
8. Diminished ability to think or concentrate nearly every day
9. Recurrent thoughts of death and suicide, with or without a plan

How'd you do? Well I scored a perfect nine out of nine. Remember, I am an overachiever!

A nervous breakdown paralyzed my ability to make even the smallest decision. And getting out of bed was like climbing Mount Everest. Thoughts of suicide are not far away. And it is the paralysis that spares you: If you do not get out of bed and drive, you won't swerve on the road "accidentally." But if action is not taken it can be a painful road to a slow death: I stopped eating. I could not sleep at night. I started hearing voices. I would get into bed and shake and convulse. The real world seemed surreal.

One of the things that saved me was the phone. As long as I was connected to people in some way I was fine. Hearing about other people's activities -- even grocery shopping -- meant there was a world out there. I was desperate to hear about anything that didn't involve me. The worst time was 2 to 6 in the morning, when I felt as if there was no life, and the world was asleep. I would pace and have panic attacks.

I didn't care about my personal appearance. For a month I wore one pair of khaki pants and a black turtleneck, which concealed my growing weight loss. I had lost 30 pounds and looked like an Auschwitz survivor.

My friends were there for me, a key to my survival. My best friend got active. He called several of my other friends and they went on a watch: all of them taking turns being with me. I was never to be left alone. My friends ordered the best take-out food to encourage me to eat, but I couldn't. They made sure that the clothes I was wearing were clean -- even if it was the same khaki pants and black turtleneck. And although I tried to feel better to make my friends feel good for their sacrifice, I was getting worse. Orange juice was the only thing I could keep down. My friends could no longer take the responsibility for my welfare.

They got me to a psychiatrist. Luckily, on the roulette wheel of therapists I landed on one who was smarter than me and really understood my condition. He said, "This is that rainy day: Treat yourself well. Take cabs instead of subways, don't deny yourself anything -- it is time to take care of yourself -- and let yourself feel your pain, because it is real." I was taking the first step toward getting better. To help me with the physical symptoms of my ailment he immediately prescribed Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug, and Zoloft, an anti-depressant. (Anti-depressants -- serotonin uptake inhibitors -- take several weeks to help balance the chemical imbalance caused by depression.) He checked me into the hospital for observation. Once there, I was finally able to relax. It's something I definitely recommend. To relax. To have full-time care. To be watched. And to put you in a situation you want to get out of as soon as possible. (Hospital food, when you have a problem with food in general, can be a great drug.) One night in the hospital was enough for me. I had hit bottom with a resounding thud.

Remember, climbing out is done in baby steps. Therapy, anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs can be huge safety nets, but you have to want to take actions to make your life better and more stable.

This sometimes takes searching your past. I turned to my family -- the last place I thought I would turn in a psychological meltdown. My mother had noted my degrading physical condition, so I explained to my parents exactly what had happened to me. I needed answers from them about them.

The answers they had hidden for years were the touchstones to my recovery. In their generation, depression and psychological disorders were considered shameful and, like in most families, were covered over in organized secrets and lies. The aunt that I was told had a stroke had put a bag over her head and asphyxiated herself. The cousin who had a "heart attack" had really hanged himself as he was approaching 40. My mother had suffered a miscarriage before she had me and because of her postpartum depression she was put on Librium and Seconal by our family doctor. She became addicted to them and was on them all through my infancy. My father's father, who died when my father was just 9, who I had been told died of an embolism, actually wasted away slowly from melancholia (as they called it then) because his twin died in a freak accident.

There now seemed to be a genetic or historical basis for my own depression. In some way I felt relieved. It united me to my parents like nothing ever had before. At the expense of having a nervous breakdown, things I had always wondered about were finally revealed. I asked my parents to come with me to a therapy session. They came, even though my father doesn't believe in doctors and my mother thought that therapy was a luxury for the rich who needed to complain about something. But it was their gift to me. They jokingly asked my psychiatrist if they were the cause of my problems. If it isn't one thing, it's your mother, right?

I made it clear to both of them, with my psychiatrist's help, that this was not about blame, but about getting to the truth -- the answers that everyone wants to those family questions. Some of the answers were startling: I learned that my grandmother had two sisters I never knew existed who died from "mysterious" illnesses. I learned that the cousin who hanged himself did so as a reaction to my uncle's rendezvous with a prostitute. Some of the answers were mundane, but the wall had been cracked.

The epiphany came after about three months of therapy, family interaction, and drug treatment. I had a moment of clarity where I really saw life as it is. I felt great. I can't explain the euphoria, but suddenly there was so much to live for. Resurrected and reborn and now out to redefine my life, I could do anything.

It has been five years since my breakdown, and life has come full circle. Guess who is the strong one again? My mother's health has deteriorated; I had to close down my father's business as he approached his 70th birthday. This, and my mother's health problems, has led to my father having a nervous breakdown. My father was always the eternal optimist, and couldn't understand what was happening to him. Luckily, when you have been to hell and back you understand the journey.

My gift to my parents is that I am helping them through this time as they did for me. It has brought us all closer together. Because of my own breakdown and subsequent healing, I have the tools and the knowledge to help ease a very stressful situation. I gave Styron's "Darkness Visible" to my father. Not admitting to his own condition, he said, "Ya know a lotta people go through what he talks about in that book."

I said, "That's the point dad -- you don't have to feel so alone."