To tell my 10 year old that I suffer with depression and anxiety?

[HereInMyHead]

Just that really. Any thoughts?

It is your choice, personally I wouldn't, I also suffer from depression, not anxiety but full on rage at times. I hide it and shield as much as I can, when I feel like the world is on my shoulders, I fight to get up for my DC.
I am not a martyr but my DM has been depressed since I can remember, I've had to be her parent so many times, every sodding Xmas she'd cry for weeks, the home was havoc and unorganised, she had a very negative outlook, we were constantly reminded how fragile she was. I felt very responsible, I still do but growing up at times I craved a strong confident parent, not a doubter.

Thanks everyone for your replies. There is a lot to think about there! I want to make it clear that I would never tell my child about any suicidal thoughts that I may have as that would be completely inappropriate and unnecessarily burdensome. My mum was depressed growing up and as a result I was neglected. This doesn't happen to my child. I feel that I want to tell him so that some of the taboo is taken out of the subject. I am a functioning parent and adult and I have some great friends that I can talk to, so not a case of me wanting to unburden myself. I very nearly told him the other day when we were watching a programme on CBBC about mental health programmes, but I didn't.

PS As a child I was totally kept in the dark about my mother's illness and would have benefited immensely from someone explaining to me that it was not my fault.. This would never have happened though as, as far as I know, no other adult was even aware of it.

I explained to mine about my bad anxiety when they were younger, but I had to because I couldn't take them places on my own and stopped driving ... I didn't want them to think I didn't want to take them but that I was unable to.

Some comments on here are terrible and it just shows that there is this huge stigma still about mental health - there shouldn't be. Those of us who are unfortunate enough to suffer it don't choose to feel the way we do and we are not lunatics and to be feared - we are normal human beings who are trying to get through each day as best we can.

@HereInMyHead I think the fact there is still so much external stigma and so much internalised self hatred among those of us with MH conditions means that we panic about discussing what is just -as someone upthread said - another medical condition.

My psychiatrist said wprds to the effect of: if you had diabetes, you'd talk to them in an age appropriaye way about it, tell them you were going to the docs who'd make it feel better, etc. As long as you weren't telling them all yhe scary frightening details and making them responsible for injecting your insulin, you'd be doing a very important part of your job as a parent by showing them real life and helping them understand why you get ill sometimes.

He went on to say something that has stuck with me: by doing this with MH conditions you are also demonstrating self care, contributing to destigmatisation and taking responsibility for your condition which means you are giving them valuable life skills and not making them responsible.

I grew up with a mother who had both of those things including huge hormonal swings, it affected me greatly. Children pick up on an awful lot but don't always have the experience and maturity to be able to rationalise them.

My childhood would have been significantly better had I been told that some people struggle with their mental health, it manifests in various ways and that there are things that can be done to help.

I grew up thinking she's always unhappy around me so obviously it must be something I'm doing. As a result I ended up with many insecurities, thinking I must have a character flaw, bottled up my emotions so that my stresses didn't impact her. I lived a very straight life, wasn't mischievous or cheeky, didn't push any boundaries not because I was a particularly well behaved person innately but couldn't handle feeling more responsible for the situation than I already did.

It's really lovely that despite the challenges you face at the moment that you're able to take a step back to look at the bigger picture and try to work out what the best thing to do for your family is.

I am so extremely annoyed by those commenting chastising people like me for upholding 'stigma' etc. comments like this:

"It is utterly naive to think that you can hide this kind of thing from a child who is living in the same house as someone suffering with these issues, and ridiculous to think that, in doing so, you will somehow burden them."

just completely dismiss my reported experience that being told all about my mum's mental illness burdened me enormously with guilt and fear. How can you possibly say

"it's far, far better to explain to a child that depression/anxiety is an illness and that medical intervention is sometimes required to treat it, as that can help to take the pressure off the child who might otherwise feel responsible for things better."

as if it is always that simple! If depression was always a simple case of "mummy's sick, but then she takes a pill and feels better" then it wouldn't be the national fucking scourge it is today would it?

My mum took antidepressants for decades. She was still profoundly depressed, up and down but often very down, she wasn't able to calmly reassure me any more than she could calmly reassure herself because she was mentally ill. I spent my childhood terrified she was going to die; I spent my adolescence and 20s desperate to make her better. I realised with an enormous sadness in my 30s I was never, never going to make her better; and last year she killed herself.

I was there for my mum for years, by her side and watching what she went through, loved her desperately, pitied her painfully. This is not about fucking STIGMA and it is colossally insulting of people to suggest that those advocating the OP protect her children as far as possible from the knowledge of her illness are doing so out of some sort of contempt or distaste for the mentally ill.

People with depression have nothing to be ashamed of, this is not about hiding it as if it's something to be ashamed of; it's about protecting a child's developing mind from the misery of knowing how much your mum, who you love more than anything in the world, struggles just to make it through the day sometimes. To protect them from the flattening terror that they may one day come home and find they've killed themselves.

Those of us who have BEEN THERE know what we're talking about. And it is not because we hate the mentally ill; quite the fucking opposite.

@curlykaren

Also, it seems like everyone who wasn't told anything about their parents MH issues, wishes they were and those that were, wishes they weren't. Which probably indicates there's no right answer

This interested me too. No-one seems to think their parent did the right thing. Which, frankly, is because I think having a mental health illness makes it very difficult to be the stable, secure and reassuring base children need, whichever way you choose to go. Those who choose to hide it are never hiding it as well as they think they are (like women in abusive marriages who are sure the children have 'no idea' because 'we never fight in front of them' - no, they're upstairs in their bedrooms listening terrified through the floor); and those who choose to be 'age-appropriately honest' in order to 'provide reassurance' are neither as appropriate or a reassuring as they would like to believe.

Basically, in my experienced opinion, it's a shit position to be in to have a mentally ill parent or parents; and it's incredibly hard as a parent to mitigate the impact on your child, because as long as it's affecting you, it is affecting them.

This is not judgement of mentally ill parents; it's just a realistic acknowledgement that just as there is no straightforward, take a pill and it's sunshine and roses treatment for depression, there is no simple straightforward way to discount your depression from your child's life, either by being honest with them or by trying to hide it. It's there, and as long as you have to live with it, so do they.