A biography of cable news pundit Rachel Maddow delves into the talking head’s lifelong battle with depression.

In the tome, author Lisa Rogak quotes the 46-year-old former Rhodes scholar saying she suffers from cyclical depression.

“The way I experience depression is a real closing off from the world,” Maddow has said. “One of my manifestations of depression for me is that I lose my will and my ability to focus. It’s like somebody hits the mute button. It’s very lonely and it can be alienating.”

Maddow says that she is fortunate her longterm partner Susan Mikula “both knows and understands it and pays attention to me on those grounds … If it ever becomes permanent, I’ll need to treat it medically, but right now I don’t.”

One way the news anchor combats the blues is by perusing goofy photos including one of late Senator John McCain wearing a tie that looks as though he borrowed it from a clown’s wardrobe.

The popular MSNBC host who has been with Mikula for over two decades has said that it was love at first sight for the pair despite both of them being involved with other women at the time. It was also the first time that Maddow had contemplated monogamy.

Maddow didn’t come out till she was in college in a unique fashion. She did it by posting flyers criticizing the First Gulf War in 1991 and then added a coda that she was a lesbian. A couple of months later the pundit told her parents, who are staunch Catholics (two of her maternal aunts are nuns) and they were initially devastated by the news.

“Rachel Maddow: A Biography” hits bookstores on January 7.