He ain't heavy, he's my brother

For years they nipped at his heels - the black dogs - yapping and barking. Somehow, for years, he outran them, keeping just a fractional step ahead. Or, if he happened to be facing them then, somehow, warding them off, keeping them at bay. But always, in his waking hours, he was aware of their closeness, felt their hot, salivary breath and - too often - came terribly close to surrendering.

First there was the miscarriage - his wife's really, but their only child. He was a mere five months from being, undoubtedly, a blissfully happy young dad at 24. Instead, as he reviewed things retrospectively, he was convinced it was then that one of those black puppies was born.

A tiny infant pup of depression that would, in time, become one of the dreaded black hounds, baying incessantly for blood. His. Food for the pups was always there, aplenty: The early years of childlessness and his wife's inability to cope with each day, feeling she was letting him down. Five years later, his wife's passing and his ensuing guilt. The domestic tension - understated, unstated - following him to work each day and wrapping itself around him like formal office attire - sombre grey or charcoal black - while he smiled beamingly outwardly for everyone - colleagues, superiors; indulged in sport, attended parties, engagements, drank coffee, or something mildly stronger, and puffed the odd chummy cigarette with a mate when a promotion didn't come his way. No one really noticed when the pallor in his cheeks became a spectrum opposite to the shade of his mind. Why? Silly question. Because no one but oneself can look into one's own mind to compare, so the darkness goes undetected. Everything around was gradually but unfailingly fading to black but not even his nearest colleague noticed the alteration.

Too often we equate outward happiness with inward calm. Not many of us pause to look more closely, listen more carefully or check to see if something else is really going on behind those eyes - those mirrors to the inward person. Or the 'voice' behind the voice. Too often, it's too late. Everybody's wiser with the benefit of hindsight. 'Of course the poor chap was grieving over his wife but how bravely he concealed it.' Or, 'I thought I discerned a crack in his voice now and then and felt he was about to reveal something personal but you know it's not in my nature to delve. It's a personal thing after all!' We exonerate ourselves thus, for - dare we say it - we certainly do not want to be giving birth to a litter of black puppies that we can take home with us. But in truth we cannot hold ourselves responsible, too.

We come to work with our own little tensions that are sometimes sparked further by things 'official' or, if fortunate, defused temporarily by something 'official' like a salary raise or a move - vertically or horizontally. We cannot be too hard on ourselves, though we grieve. We can only wonder at the staggering capacity of the mind to withstand an onslaught for days, weeks, decades and then, one unsuspecting morning, cave in without resistance. We can only wonder at the nature of depression and how, like a cancer, it eats away, insidiously, at the intellect.

We wonder how this man - that we now know was clinically depressed - could walk cheerfully into office each morning with a book under his arm, often a dark novel by Kafka or Hardy and go home seemingly happy at the end of the office day. And then, the day he fails to turn up, his final day of earthly residence, he's found to be reading something as light, entertaining and amusing as Watership Down, a book about rabbits, not dogs. Certainly not black dogs.

We'll never know, but we must strive to be more caring about the people we work closest with. It is a small favour - to look out for the one who shares a personal space with us for roughly eight hours a day.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.