When I was 18 I had a nervous breakdown and lost the ability to read, I could barely read emails, definitely not the news. But I got it back through really methodical work. Here’s my advice for the depressed people in the room who also can’t read

I started by reading YA books that I had read many times. Something familiar was less straining. I then forced myself to read pieces of news articles. After I could do that I began reading introductions to theory books or just summary articles.

I needed to read a bunch of philosophy because that was my major. I trained myself by reading the Stanford summary and dictionary of philosophy before reading the primary texts. Read many sparknotes of Kant before reading Kant etc

I still don’t feel like I recovered from that episode (research shows a severe manic episode lowers your IQ by like ten points oof) but I can finally read if I try really hard. It’s a skill and depression erodes it but you can push back by starting small and building up

Think of it as a workout. You can no longer run marathons, start going on walks, then jogs, etc