''It kind of snuck up on me. As a storyteller the first thing I want to do is tell a story, but we pull from the well within us, we write what we know and what we care about.

''Now that I've sold six novels, people talk about my body of work and mental health is a common theme.''

Growing up in blue-collar neighbourhoods in Philadelphia, mental health was something Quick's family didn't talk about.

''But mental illness runs in my family,'' he says. ''My great grandmother died in a mental institution, one of those old-school, electric shock-therapy type of places, and it was something my family was ashamed of and didn't talk about.

''It wasn't until I was 30-something years old that I admitted I had anxiety issues, that I would sometimes get depressed. Now I go and talk about it openly all over the world. At 29 I never would have even admitted it.

''It's heartening to think when I put this stuff out there, how many people write and say how authentic it is, how true it rings. There are people that don't want to talk about mental health but they saw Bradley Cooper in [the movie of] Silver Linings and the next day they were talking about it.''

With his latest novel, Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock, Quick takes the issue to a younger audience. Leonard is a loner, depressed and on the verge of something awful one school day. It's his 18th birthday and he wants to say goodbye to the few people who have made a difference in his life.

''When you put a book into the hands of teens that's about suicide and depression I think it's got to be more weighty,'' Quick says.

''I wanted to write a book that would let kids know they weren't alone, especially kids like Leonard Peacock.

''I know when I was a teen and I was dealing with all the depression, the one thing I really wanted to know is that I wasn't alone. I'm an artist and I didn't understand what that meant when I was 18. I felt very uncomfortable in the herd, I was always on the fringe.

''When I met my wife [novelist Alicia Bessette] in college, she was probably my first lighthouse keeper, the first person to tell me it was OK to write, that I should pursue the arts. Growing up and saying I wanted to be a novelist felt like I was committing a crime. The men in my family made me feel that way for a long time.''

Do they understand it now? ''My father is a banker so he's very impressed with the success of Silver Linings,'' Quick jokes, adding that they are proud of him now.

''But it does make me a little upset that, especially in America, you can't be an artist until you're making money. I was an artist before I was making money. What I was doing was very valid before Silver Linings won an Oscar.''

Before he turned to full-time writing, Quick worked with teenagers with severe autism and brain traumas and taught high school English for seven years.

''With my mental health background somehow I became the go-to person for troubled teens. I'm not quite sure how that happened but once it did it was like a floodgate opened and kids were coming to me every day to talk about problems that they were having.

''What I noticed was there really wasn't anywhere else for these kids to talk about these very serious problems. They were expected to look perfect, get perfect scores, to win all the sporting events, to put up this facade of perfection.

''Kids who weren't able to do that all the time were trying hard to blend in but were suffering in silence. It was frustrating for me especially with my mental health background.

''When I quit teaching it just lingered and I kept thinking about how we sometimes don't do a great job of taking care of the emotional health of our students when we're trying to educate them and get them into top universities.

''I think that's what I wanted to write about with Leonard Peacock. He's a brilliant kid, he can ace [exams], get into any university, but he's not being taken care of. A lot of people have dropped that ball but there's a few who make a huge difference in his life.

''One of the reasons I wrote the book is because every time in America when we have school violence, a school shooting, people ask what's wrong with schools, what's wrong with kids. One of the things I wanted to highlight was what's going right in schools.''

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick is published by Headline, $22.99.