A Bit More Than a Rough Patch

The hardest year of her life nearly ended it.Instead, it gave her new material.She survived a suicide attempt. Then she did what any comedian would do: she wrote a show about it.Comedian and mental health speaker Susan Stewart thought she knew a thing or two about resilience. She had survived depression before, built a career helping people see the lighter side of life, and spent years believing she had beaten it.Then 2023 happened.When depression and anxiety came roaring back in 2023, Susan was convinced she could handle them. She exercised. She meditated. She read the books. She self-helped the hell out of herself. And as things got worse, she resisted the very help she would have encouraged anyone else to get. What she dismissed as a rough patch eventually became a mental health crisis that culminated in a suicide attempt-and forced her to confront the trauma, shame, stigma, and patterns she could no longer outrun.A Bit More Than a Rough Patch is Susan’s sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, always true account of what happened next-from psychiatric care and 'therapy camp' to learning how to accept help, trust treatment, and find her way back to herself. With the wit of a comedian and the perspective of someone who has been to the darkest edge and returned, Susan reminds us that taking mental health seriously doesn’t mean we have to stop laughing.