to think that the concept of post natal depression is overused?

[moondog]

HOW COME WOMEN HAVE TO HAVE A LABEL (sorry) for so many things?

PMS
AND
PND
Menopausal
OCD
Passive/Aggressive

It seems that the concept of being low/cross/nasty/bitchy/tired/worn out is positively old fashined.

Im no expert, but it was my understanding that depression and such like was a bit more than feeling low/cross/nasty/bitchy/tired/worn out and isnt exclusive to women.

Oooh shit now you've done it !

can't be arsed to respond to such a nonsensical op but I wanted to say this:
OprahWinfrey, that is so sad. I hope your relative's DD hasn't had any major negative effect from that, other than losing her mummy of course

Moondog, for example, is a....

And I really, really hate people who TYPE IN CAPS and then say (sorry) - no, if you have the time to type (sorry) then you have the time to overtype without the caps lock on. Shouting makes you look even more ignorant.

(PND and depression sufferer - who didn't seek help until she couldn't stop crying every day and the lovely ladies on the mental health thread more or less ordered me to go to my doctor and get sorted)

A question to the PND/depression sufferers or anyone who knows....if you have children, and you go to your doctor saying you are depressed, then are SS automatically informed?

No, I don't think so. Not in my experience, unless the PND o depression was so severe it constituted a child protection issue.

Moondog - you are sharing a platform with TOM CRUISE here for God's sake.

That is never a good place to be and usually a warning that what you are saying might be a tad loopy.

oh moondog

read Brooke Shields' book (paying particular attention to the bit in the car), have a look round the mental health boards, come and live with me for a while (PND suffering anorexic) then try to repost this thread.

I guess it depends on the doctor, then. Or if they want to be on the safe side.

You could say the same thing about the massive rise in children being diagnosed with ADHD and learning difficulties for example surely?

Is the huge rise down to the fact people are better trained to recognise them? Or is it that people are more willing to get help for them now?

I'm so delighted to learn that the crushing depression I experienced after DD was born was merely a label, and perhaps all in my head. Wow...now I just can't IMAGINE why my DH was so concerned about my inability to get out of bed and function for both of my dc's resulting in him having to take extra days off work, and make an emergency call to the HV and GP. And...the woman at the counseling unit was SO NICE to entertain this trivial little issue, and see me every weeks for a few months. If only you'd been here, moondog, to show me how silly I was being in 'needing' this label...I'm SURE you've been wicked helpful in changing the lives of other MNers with this SUPER insightful thread...thanks a whole bunch!!!!!!!!!!

I dont think it is overused at all it is pretty hard to get a doctor to say you have PND. I had general "stress sadness" for a brief period after both my first and third children which I wouldnt describe and have never described as PND. After my son I didnt leave the house for over a year didnt leave my bedroom for weeks at a time and spent every evening lying in bed shaking and having panic attacks. Oh and the best was for just a few days in the earlier part of that year where I was totally convinced that moving my head to fast would kill me. I was told I had in the words of my doctor "a little anxiety about the changes my second child had brought". i THINK in that case PND could have been used quite accurately although at the time I was thinking the same as you in your first post - you dont want to be one of those people with PND!

I do think it's over-diagnosed. I have been diagnosed as depressed several times over the last 20 years (since the age of 12 or so, including in patient treatment.) I have only recently realised that I am not, and possibly have never been.

What I am is a highly strung person who is very anxious. And I feel things deeply, but learned to hide that as a young child. Bottling things up is an excellent recipe for feeling dreadful. But I do not want medication, because that does not solve anything. I don't need to be cured, I need to be accepted for the person I am! I lost my twenties to those drugs, I lost the first year of DC1's life in a grey SSRI fuddled cloud. After DC3 I was a little overwhelmed, immediate reaction by pretty much everyone is to tell me I must get drugged.

I think an earlier poster hit the nail on the head exactly - calling women mad (OK, depressed) enables an abdication of responsibility. It's not MY fault she's sad, it's a CONDITION.

I'm not saying that I do not believe PND exists, or anything else, (although I am very when men claim to have it.) I just truly believe that it is over diagnosed and over medicated.

IME, people with mental health problems will go to agonising lengths to avoid admitting it to themselves or others for fear of being labelled.
I had severe PND and managed to keep going until my daughter was over a year old. I've no doubt that I was low / cross / nasty / bitchy / tired and worn out. I was also so mentally ill I was at risk of topping myself.

I was diagnosed with PND by a umber of professionals- They were probably right. However, it meant most of my symptoms of hypothyroidism were attributed to PND, and it took me almost a year to get any appropriate (ie not prozac) treatment. Once treated, it was like everything went from black and white to colour.

The term PND is broadly applied to a number of symptoms. Of course it exists, but it is in danger of becoming a 'catch-all' diagnosis, making almost any symptom a woman feels in the first year of her DC's life attributable to it.

*number

Katty,
or because there is no hard and fast way of diagnosing these things?

moondog didnt say these things dont exist, I think?

oops repeated the phrase "these things" Shorter than typing moondog's original list out.

well, PND is in part a mind-state cause by a physical state (the hormonal fall-out from the end of pregnancy) and as all women have pretty much he same hormones flowing through their system post-natally, it wouldn't be any suprise that PND is phenomenally common.

an yes, those terms are all over-used - people do say 'i fell ever so depressed' when in fact they are just having a shite one, but on the other hand...depression is also pretty common.

OCD can describe quite a number of things...from toddlers that arrange their toys in order (lots of toddler OCD around!) to adults that obsessively clean (again, it is aso a matter of opinion what constitutes 'obsessive' - to me, cleaning the whole house every day would seem over the top, to someone else, the bare minimum) - and yes people overuse this term too. Yet there is also alot of it about.

Menopausal - well, sooner or later, pretty much all of us will go there...

now, yes some people are just plain moody, you do sometimes have a bad week, or month (or year!) and some people just clean too much - however there are plenty of people out there with bona fide medical conditions also.

Well I think that labels have advantages and disadvantages.

The main advantage is that it can lead to sets of similar circumstances being grouped together so that people can identify that other people are suffering in the same way.

The first 4 on the OP's list (PMS,AND,PND and Menopausal) are all hormone related.

If it was not for those labels then many people would not be aware of these types of issues and would suffer in silence.

I woud think that many people over the years have been depressed whilst PG and may have felt dreadful and totally abnormal that they are not "happy" at this traditionall happy time.

Thankfully with articles and discussions about AND they can see they are not alone.

One disadvantage of labels is of course that they can lead to "a one size fits all" treatment policy. They can become overused/used flippantly etc.

The points raised in this thread concerning depression and use of SSRIs are very interesting.

Many people with reservations over SSRIs etc will be interested in this website.

Moondog I think that you will see from some of the posts on this thread that without the labels you are basically getting people practically bearing their souls to try to describe what they've been through.

Perhaps for someone like you (who seems to not have suffered from one of the conditions you have labelled) this is a better way to inform you of some of these conditions?

I think it's all on a continuum isn't it? E.g. we're all on the OCD continuum, I used to have superstitions, now I'm a trainee CBT therapist I no longer do my rituals (e.g. saluting magpies) but it's a struggle for me! One v eminent psychologist in the OCD fields aska students in his lecture to say "I wish x (insert name of most loved person) would die in a car crash"> Obviously most people can't do it, according to him you HAVE to be able to do this to be a good therapist .

Not so sure about PND, Dr thought I had PND but it turned out it was extreme exhaustion but I had sypmtoms of depression, paranoia, hypomania and suicidality. I regognised I needed help (have been working as a mental health professional for 11 years). 5 days of sleeping tablets, stopping bf and dh taking over the nights half the week and I'm nearly 100% better. Would have been very easy for me to get a PND diagnosis though (ds 5 months)

With dd (now 3.5) i had PND though, it was real, but I didn't seek any help with it and it affected my attachment to her until fairly recently . It started though with the same symptoms of exhaution and sleep deprivation coupled with this insane perfectionism. Hormones, lack of sleep, cognitive distortions, relationship issues and environment all played a part. it was multi-factorial.

FWIW I think the term "bi-polar" is hugely overused in the media. If any of these "celebrities" had spent hours in a seclusion room with someone who hadn't slept for 3 weeks, who though they were a monster and had to be held by four staff at all times to stop themselves from hurting themslevs/others severely and being resistenat to elephant doses of major tranquilisers they would maybe not be so glib about this term.

Cyclothymia, dramatic mood swings, is still pretty grim but not as extreme.

"....think we live in a time when we no longer accept deep melancholy and really quite severe distress as being within the normal range of human experience......"

It is a common misconception that depression is the same as sadness/distress/melancholy, when it is so much more than that. For me, depression means my life is lived in shades of grey, no motivation to do anything, little or no anticipation or enjoyment from normal activities or special occasions, bone-weariness, inability to sleep properly or take care of myself properly (some days it is a battle just to get out of bed and see the children off to school, and a shower is beyond my capabilities). And that's the good days - on the bad days, all I want to do is to fall asleep and never wake up. I am on antidepressants, and am not having suicidal thoughts, but I do think about death, and look forward to it.

It is definitely more than being a bit "....low/cross/nasty/bitchy/tired/worn out.....!!

I have had depression since I was bullied in my mid teens, though that only became clear to me in the past couple of years, when a psychotherapist told me that it is not normal for a teenager to plan their suicide.

Depression has come and gone for me over the years since, and I was first formally diagnosed after ds1 was born, when I was diagnosed with PND - in hindsight, I suspect that it was probably a mix of depression and PND, and that I was predisposed to get the PND because of my history of depression.

Did I/do I want a label - yes, I do - because having a label means I get the treatment that I need, and that means that there is hope that I will eventually beat this - I may one day live a normal life, where I can enjoy things, feel positive emotions, have the energy to look after myself and the house, regain my sex drive - things that moondog probably takes for granted.

I suffered an extended bout of depression after the birth of DS1. I can assure you the effects are very real though I do agree that there is a diagnosis risk through labeling. Call it PND (or PPD) and you immediately assume that it is a bio-chemical consequence of giving birth. The truth is far more complicated than that. In my case the chemical imbalance, if there was one, was merely a contributing cause - there was an awful lot of other stuff going on that couldn't be resolved by simply taking a pill. The pills did, however, give me the strength to get back on my feet and confront all sorts of issues.