Matt Haig isn’t claiming to be an expert. The 50-year-old author has been treated as a go-to on mental health in the past, after writing both best-selling fiction (The Midnight Library) and best-selling non-fiction (Reasons to Stay Alive) about anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation. He has also spoken in depth about his own mental health issues, including a breakdown in his early twenties and a few wobbles since then.
But he’s wary of promoting himself as an authority on the subject. “We talk about guru culture and there’s obviously a lot of toxic people in that space.” he tells me from his house in Brighton, which he shares with his wife and two teenage children.
“But we don’t talk so much about how there’s a real desire to put people on pedestals and get answers from them. That definitely happened to me at one point, where I found myself leaning too much into therapist territory. I’m better at just trying to make something visible and accessible through writing, trying to bring that equivalent of me back from the cliff edge.”
All the same, he has a lot to say about the manosphere, about class, about neurodiversity and about the interconnectedness of all these things when it comes to mental health, both his own and other people’s.
