In Finland, every fifth person suffers from depression at some point in their lives. We also know that the Covid-19 pandemic has increased the cases of diagnosed depression.

In this portrait series I did for my studies in Visual Journalism, I wanted to examine the way depression varies from person to person. I wanted the people to represent roughly the same demographic group I am in: young people living in a city. Demographic characterics rarely explain the causes of depression, but based on my observations, more and more of us want to stop hiding a disease.

Depression doesn't treat everyone the same. This group of people includes several chapters, as I like to call them. There's a person with bipolar disorder, which is a mental health condition that causes extreme mood swings, from emotional highs to lows. There's another who recently got rediagnosed. One of them works in stand-up business. And — one of them also just stopped taking antidepressants, and follows how that change feels.