Dementors: A Metaphor for Depression?

Perhaps everyone of my generation is familiar with Harry Potter.  How many of you secretly wished/hoped to get a letter before your eleventh birthday inviting you to study at Hogwards? 

Throughout history, authors and artists have used their mental illness to create some brilliant work; Beethoven, Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens are just to name a few.  It is well documented that J.K. Rowling suffers from depression and she used her downward spiral to create one of the greatest metaphors for depression ... the dementors. 

These characters:

• Feed on positive emotions and force people to relive their worst memories
• Can fill a person with overwhelming sadness and hopelessness
• Can preform The Kiss, an action which sucks a person's soul away and leaves nothing but an empty shell
• Cannot be killed.  The only way to get rid of the dementors is to conjure a Patronus which is formed by thinking of the happiest, most powerful memory a person possesses.

Check out the full article over at Heart of Glass.