My mum has suffered from depression for decades - at least 40 years or so. She's been on and off various antidepressants, had brief hospitalisations when I was little, CBT, etc, and there just seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. I am fairly sure now that she'll never be well, which really hurts. She's been trying to live without the drugs for a good few years now, as even the newer more advanced ones (SSRIs, is it? - Citalopram and that lot) leave her feeling numb, dead and stupid.
She has two degrees, is ridiculously brainy and scholarly, but has been living on benefits/disability etc for almost 30 years, since the last time she worked. Sorry if that sounds snobbish, but it's just not the way you'd expect her life to have turned out, and I feel so, so sorry for her, but I just don't know what to do. She's intensely private (I wasn't allowed into her last flat for roughly 12 years) and brushes most "difficult" subjects under the carpet, though she'll occasionally write me letters about it. She hates talking on the phone. Although she's told me she would never commit suicide, I sometimes feel that she's just going to waste away and die with the horror and stress of it all, and that I'm lucky to have had her for as long as I have. Sorry if that sounds melodramatic! She's always seemed "old" to me - I can remember her at my age, when I was 11, and she's always seemed like an old woman. She comes from a large family, and there's a huge incidence of depression among the women - I'm amazed and hugely grateful that I seem to have escaped it so far.
My dad has told me that throughout their marriage (they were divorced about 20 years ago), there would sometimes appear to be "false dawns" when a treatment, or exercise, or a change in diet or whatever, would temporarily appear to have brought huge improvements in her condition - but it never lasted for long. When I was a child, weeks would go by sometimes without me seeing her - she was just shut up in her room - and noone told me why.
She is brilliant with my DC, in fact children are the only people she really feels comfortable with, and she's amazing with them. In fact, she's so socially anxious, even with me, that her ideal scenario is for her to come to the house and I disappear to do some work, so she can have all the time with the kids and only interact minimally with me. The idea of the two of us just going out for a coffee and a chat would strike absolute terror into her, and the whole thing would be so awkward that it would just be an ordeal for her.
Despite it all, she fights relentlessly to remain optimistic, at least to me - she believes in not burdening your children with your own problems etc, though I have encouraged her to open up a bit more to me in recent years. The only thing I can think of now is to get her on a waiting list for more CBT - she recently moved city and it will take her months, and a gargantuan effort, to arrange this with a GP, and it'll be bloody ages before she gets to the top of the list - 2 years or something, I think.
Thanks for reading, sorry for the length, and I just wondered if anyone could see a way out of this?
Was going to namechange as I know one or two of you IRL, but ah, feck it.
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Mental health
Is there anything that can be done to help my mum?
ScarlettCrossbones · 01/09/2011 14:51
Thanks, madmouse. I don't think she thinks that - I think she does have insight into her condition and is very aware that depression is a physical ailment, hence her constant quest for possible vitamins/supplements that might help. I genuinely think that apart from the fact she was often not there for me because she was ill, she was a very good mother, one of the best i.e. her philosophy/methods of parenting were spot on. And I think she knows that I appreciate that because I have told her how great she is with my kids - that she has patience where I would be irritable etc - and that I consider my children to be her "property" (for want of a better word) as well as mine. But we've never really discussed it, of course, nor would she want to 
.
Oh, Dorothy, that is so sad. As you say, you just can't make people accept the help if they don't want it. I think my mother does want the help, but everything just takes her such a painfully long time to get around to that I always feel I'm trying to restart heavy wheels that have ground to a stop. And she won't let me intervene and get things moving a bit faster. She's never rude, but always cheerfully dismisses any offers of help and insists she can do things herself.
Just now, for example, she has come into a little bit of money which she plans to use to buy a computer - I think being online could help her immensely in quite a few ways, and she's actually thrilled at the prospect - but although I've offered to help her buy one and she's accepted, she keeps postponing coming round to do this as she's not feeling well enough. And if the kids are around, then the computer search will have to be put on hold, as she will just concentrate on them. And she won't come round when it's only me at home - so it's a vicious circle, really! This has been going on for months now. It's the same with just about everything she does, and it's very frustrating - she moved house not long ago and it took her almost a year to clear out her old flat and actually move - and she refused all offers of help, of course. But I do know that it's all down to her illness, and how ridiculously complicated she finds every little thing. I feel awful for her.
Thanks, kizzie. She does know that I love her, but we're also both a bit emotionally repressed, I suppose - no gushy big gestures of love or anything. Yes, she's great with the kids. She could spend an hour with one of them talking about a snail in the garden or something(!) 
I hope you've managed to live with your depression/overcome it? What did you find helped you the most?
Hi Scarlett - I definately wouldnt say that Ive 'overcome' it - more learnt to live with (sort of 
)
I suppose the most important thing for me has been actually accepting it. On the face of it I'm not your obvious depression candidate (which is rubbish of course because it can affect anyone.) Quite confident, successful career, chatty, nice life etc etc.
So i just denied it to myself and everyone else for years, and fought against it.
Now I try to accept it like any other illness.
Other things:
- i take a low dose AD - doesnt reduce blips completely but for the time being seem to be managaing ok (altho accept that i might need to review this)
- get PLENTY of rest. Tiredness definately has a negative impact on me. I work long hours during the week so try and rest at the weekend.
- I take a fish oil supplement
- I keep a journal when things difficult - seems to help to write it down. And I also do CBT type exercises in there to reduce anxiety.
- Try and eat a decent diet.
So nothing major... but added together they seem to help.
Hope your mum gets her computer!
Nana and kizzie, thanks so much for your replies. Nana, I don't feel you're being unsympathetic at all - I feared/suspected that this was the case with my mum and she's just never going to be well and happy like other people. What a waste of a life, being blighted by depression like this. Though maybe she doesn't see it like that? I hope not. She has still been very influential to me in a number of ways (mainly parenting). In answer to your questions, I'm an only child, so noone else to sound off to (!), and she doesn't have any friends . She does live in the same city as me, but doesn't drive so it's a bit of a hike (waiting for two buses etc) for her to get over. As for me/the DC going to her house - well, we do occasionally, but she tends to close off many options from that point of view - she doesn't "do" evenings - goes to bed and gets up ridiculously early, and it's been that way for years; she won't even entertain the thought of weekends, as she insists this must be family time for me, DP and the DC ... all ways of avoiding contact, I'm sure. And with DC at school and nursery it's virtually impossible to find a midweek option, so I need to wait for her to psych herself up to come to me - which can take weeks and weeks.
But yes, I'm happy to just let her have lots of time with the children as I know that's what she wants. Adults are just too scary for her, even me.
"Open up a whole new world" - those were my words exactly on the computer front! It's just getting her to get round to getting one ... I can honestly see it being into next year now, before the purchase is finally made.
Thanks again - I know I'm not the one with the problem but it is a bit of a relief to me to write this all down.
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