Depression: Our topic in October

Dear reader

My father liked Fritz+Fränzi. He was both a loving and strict critic of our texts and pictures. In the end, I sat at his bedside and we leafed through the magazines together. As a trained typesetter, nothing escaped his practised eye.

As I write these lines, I am thinking of my father. He was the youngest of ten children. He delivered sandwiches before school. He often walked barefoot because there wasn't enough money for shoes. He had never been to America, spoke no foreign language and had never learnt to swim. His greatest wish was that we children would be better off one day.

He was a fine, humorous man and a wonderful father. We loved him because he could be wonderfully unreasonable. As children, we were allowed to get up in the middle of the night and watch boxing matches. Or the moon landing. He took us motocrossing on rainy weekends. We trudged through the mud with mud on our boots and a sausage in our hands. We hiked in the mountains for hours, from hut to hut, coming home tired and happy in the evening. Later, he accompanied my siblings and me carefully and calmly on our private and professional journeys.

My father was proud of what the small Fritz+Fränzi team in faraway Zurich achieved every month. Even if it is often not easy fare that we put you, dear reader, through: He would have enjoyed this issue too. Because it tackles real-life questions: How do mental illnesses or eating disorders develop in young people? And how can we help? What do parents need to consider when having their schoolchild treated? How can teachers improve their relationship with the parents of their pupils?

My father fell asleep peacefully during the production of this magazine. He was 85 years old. He did not have to suffer. We are eternally grateful for that. I held his hand for a long time, talked about the past and told him how much it meant to me that he was the way he was. Even though he was no longer able to answer, I know that he felt that I was with him in his last hours.

The death of my father has made me realise the finite nature of our existence like never before in my life. And how much we should take care to always live in peace with ourselves and our fellow human beings.

The death of my grandad also affected my family. «Why do people have to die?» asked my 11-year-old son. I didn't know the answer straight away. And my daughter, 9, enquired anxiously: «Daddy, do we always have to be sad from now on?»

Thank you, dear reader, for allowing me to share these personal thoughts with you. I dedicate this booklet to my father, who has always been a role model and companion to me.

Thank you for everything, dear Daddy.
And have a good journey into the light.

Sincerely,
Your Nik Niethammer

«Nothing has a stronger psychological impact on children than the unlived lives of their parents.»

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961),
Swiss psychiatrist and founder
of analytical psychology