Mark Rice-Oxley: How I survived a nervous breakdown When a doctor gently suggests he could be depressed, he recoils physically. Depression is for losers, something that happens to other people - those with "dark childhoods, fatal flaws, people from broken homes and broken marriages and broken countries." Yet, when he Googles the word (he becomes obsessive about Googling and chat rooms), the descriptions thrown up match his own experience. Depression, it seems, is about loss: loss of weight, energy, patience, concentration and, especially, joy. Even his beloved music - he played rock and jazz on piano and guitar - no longer gave him pleasure. Friends thought Rice-Oxley would be the "last person" to get depressed - and so did he. He'd led a charmed life. He had an idyllic childhood in Hampshire, followed by travels to Moscow and the Balkans as a student and twentysomething, when he started to write. And finally, he had a happy marriage, children (now aged five, eight and 10) and a sought-after job as a night news editor on a national newspaper. "What did I have to be depressed about?" he asks. His book is a quest to find the answer. Looking back, he believes it was the frantic lifestyle, the pressures of fatherhood and work, that made him ill, underpinned by his eagerness to please, his inability to say no and his perfectionism. At one point, he was doing 20-hour days, including household chores, nursery and school runs, freelancing in the day and cycling in the evening to his shifts on the paper. In between, he was dashing off to do 50 lengths in the pool. "I wanted to be a good professional and a good parent - I tried to have it all and in the end it ground me down," he says. So trying to "have it all" is hard for men, too? "I do think working fathers with young families have it tough," he says. The loss of pre-fatherhood pleasures - fun, social life, parties, adventures - didn't help his mood. His book is brave in its description of the dark side of early parenthood. "My kids are wonderful and I am not blaming them," he is keen to stress. But I saw fatherhood as an obligation, something weighing me down rather than enriching my life. Depression is often thought of as primarily affecting women, yet one in three of those diagnosed with it are men, while research from the Medical Research Council, published in 2010, found that one in five new fathers will experience some form of depressive illness before their first child is a teenager. He says he knows several middle-class, middle-aged dads "bashing away at careers and families, trying too hard, trying not to let anyone down, permanently knackered." His lemon tree died, but Rice-Oxley recovered, albeit slowly and with the odd relapse. His joy in music, in his children, in the seasons, returned. He started to sleep better. The love and support of family - in particular his wife Sharon - and friends helped him through, as did the professionals he called on (except when he had to stop his psychiatric programme at The Priory after his insurance company told him his cover no longer included psychiatric care). I am a lucky man. I was able to pay for a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, which came to a four-figure sum by the end. Most people don't have that kind of money. Learning to meditate, to become "mindful" or aware of the moment, helped - and still helps - him combat negative, obsessive thinking, although it took him a while to buy into the idea. Drugs - sleeping pills, antidepressants and when things got critical, lorazepam, a tranquilliser that protected him from the sharp edges of the illness - played a part in his recovery. Above all, he learned to accept what he calls his "thing" and to be kind to himself. One therapist advised him to take up things he was no good at, such as gardening, as an antidote to his competitive drive. As a result, he ended up growing potatoes the size of peas. In the book's final chapter, Rice-Oxley still defines himself as mentally ill. He says he broke a bit of his brain "in the same way you might a collarbone" and that it took a lot of healing. Nowadays, he lives life at a gentler pace and works part-time. He knows that he will always be vulnerable. Sharon is his best adviser when it comes to cutting down on commitments. Depression is a bit like cancer or heart disease: once you've had it, you have to accept it is part of who you are and it could come back - particularly if you don't take care. It's only when you truly accept that you'll never be properly well again that you start to recover. Underneath the Lemon Tree: a Memoir of Depression and Recovery" by Mark Rice-Oxley (Little Brown, £13.99) is available to pre-order from Telegraph Books at £12.99 + £1.25 p&p. Call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk