The tight supply of housing means that housebuyers are not benefiting much from the traditional summer-holiday lull in the market, which usually depresses asking prices.
"Do you want to be really depressed?" asked Ian Scott, 55, beckoning down the path of his soggy garden, which did not smell very good, having been deluged by sewage-contaminated water three times in the last month.
I had always considered myself lucky to have a gig that was so much fun, but in the months before that sales meeting I found myself depressed, asking, "Is this it, every day, until I die?" The future seemed laid out in front of me in an endless Outlook calendar.
"Are you depressed ?" he asks.
So should we be depressed, I asked.
"Is the patient doing everything they were doing before they got depressed?" he asked.
Inez Okrent, whose son David, a Harvard junior, committed suicide five years ago, said that although she told her son's floor leader that he was depressed and asked that she be alerted if he seemed worse, no one bothered to keep her informed.
Each time the man complained of feeling depressed, Trunnell asked him what he intended to do about it.
In a study by Martin Seligman, a leader in the field of positive psychology, people who considered themselves severely depressed were asked to write down three good things that happened each day for 15 days.
The first time I went to her I was really depressed, and asked her if she thought God was punishing me for my sins.
