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.

stayingdavidtennantsgirl, you have just described to the letter the fog that I have lived in for the last 5 years.

i used to fantasise about dying and wonder how i could orchestrate my death. one very bad day i waited for dh to come home and handed ds to him without speaking. it wasd tipping it down, went outside (in my pj's, no shoes) to a bridge and sat on the railings hoping that the wind would blow me off into the main road (considering that i weighed 6st at the time) or i would fall.

i still have bouts now and it terrifies me. thank GOD there is a name for it. otherwise it would just be me being low.

Incidentally - I should have said, in reply to an earlier question, that despite having had post-natal depression after each of the three dses, we were never reported to Social Services. I assume that the doctor judges it on a case by case basis, and will only report if he or she feels that the children are at risk.

Also, I am going to a regular psychotherapy group at the moment - something that wasn't available on the NHS where I used to live (I got three group sessions, only one of which talked about depression, and which were, frankly, a waste of time). I have had to wait over a year to get into the group, but that's because people stay in the group until they no longer need it(even if this is a year or two), so group turnover is slow. On the upside, this means I will get the help I need for as long as I need it.

One day I want to be able to stop taking my antidepressants, and measuring my life away one pill at a time - and actually look forward to things, and enjoy them.

I think few people would argue that PND is simply about hormones. There are many papers that demonstrate the correlation between prolonged PND and controlling partners, for example.

Many mental health problems are going to involve a combination of factors in their development and potential resolution.

But unless you genuinely don't believe that these conditions exist, why would you argue that they shouldn't have a label? How else could we refer to them?

Of course sometimes people will be misdiagnosed - the same is true of physical conditions.

"....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......"

The fact that people accepted it as being within the normal range of human experience didn't mean they were necessarily better able to deal with it. There are lots of adults around who suffered as children from their parents' undiagnosed mental health problems. Suicide and infanticide were hardly unheard of 100 years ago. Going further back, some of the miracles that medieval saints were supposed to deal with sound suspiciously like depression.

Going off at a slight tangent, I was told the other day by a physio that I show signs of the same joint condition as my children. Subsequent conversation between mother and myself went something like this:
-Well, you never used to have that as a child!
-Errr, I think I must have done, you know. There were so many things I couldn't do.
-Well, you never told us about it!
-Noone ever told me that things weren't meant to be that difficult. I thought they were and that everybody else was just cleverer and braver at dealing with it. How was I to know?

Glad to see this thread moved on. And that some others appear to understand the point that Moondog is not questioning the existence of the conditions in her op, merely that we could perhaps be too quick to label them in an unhelpful way. Was it really such an outrageous suggestion? Seems that several of us on the thread were willing to consider the issue, rather than just jump on her from a great height for daring to raise it.

Up until relatively recently there were also a number of women incarcerated in mental institutions for suffering what we would now diagnose as depression.

Yes, but where are all these people who are claiming to suffer from depression and PND while actually perfectly healthy? I only seem to come across people who are desperate not to be labelled.

I have a friend who had just be told she has PND. She is resisting drugs because she 'doesn't want to be one of those people' who she imagines with end up drugged to the eyeballs for the rest of their life and called 'mentally ill'.

Stigma is still alive and kicking I believe. Once you have the label of depression it's very hard to shake off and people worry about that.

At school I was told I had dyslexia and personally did everything possible to get rid of that label. I never had extra time in exams, never told any teachers (apart from the one who said I had it!) and generally tried to make it go away. I didn't want the lable of someone who had any 'extra needs'. I got 4 A-Levels and a MA without any extra help. Maybe I would have done better had I got more help.... Who knows. The question is, is the fear of the lable holding people back from getting help they need ?

My friend just spent 3 days solidly crying but cannot shake of the fear of being banded with the 'mentally ill'. To me the numbers are not really what matters for these things but the attitudes surrounding them.

Moondog;

Yanbu...

But I think it's great that PMT was invented..

...it will get me off killing my dh and nicking out of Tescos

i also agree that there is much throwing of pills at people, and that an approach more based around acknoweldging the problem, deciding positive steps to take to address it and acting on that would be a better way of addressing mild cases of clinial depression (as ADs have been shown to be only as good as the placebo in these cases)... there is no vested interest promoting this though (apart from authors of self help books!)

interestingly, a study found that one of the best ways to prevent PND was to pair up mums with another mum who had been through depression - who called them once a week to offer advice, and a sympathetic ear. this was more effective than many conventional therapies. one wonders why such services are no widely offered when they are so easy to set up via the internet, and much cheaper than drugs or CBT (as the women were volunteering their time).

also feel i should add that when dh asked me (very gently) if we could go to the doctor, he thought i was depressed I was OUTRAGED how fucking DARE he call me a looper? how dare he imply that i couldnt cope with being a mother. just because i couldnt wash, sleep, see people, get dressed and had dead eyes.

This thread is very interesting although also VU. I was told be various helpful family members that I had PND when DD was a baby - cried a lot,generally and disappointed that after going through IVF and a stressful pregnancy I found a baby really hard too. It wasn't PND and got better of its own accord after a little while.

DH was on medication recently that can cause depression as a side effect. It was heart breaking to see my usually happy, easy going husband curled in a ball in bed because he didn't want to live. That was a totally differet animal and I felt quite upset that my wider family were belittling DH's experience by atttributing it to me when I was adjusting to being a mum.

I don't think it is up to any of us to say what PND, or any other mental health issue is or is not, or who or who does not have it based primarily on our own personal experiences.

Nor should we be saying what treatment is right for a specific individual.

I cannot see what purpose this thread is serving other than to push people into revealing things about themselves that they find distressing. Guilt is a huge part of depression and reading this is just going to make some people feel guilty about having depression and stop asking for help of any kind.

I actually wonder how many women would get PND if having babies didn't physically drain you so much and if you could get a full night's sleep every night.

Moondog - 200 years ago Crohn's disease wasn't a condition. It didn't exist to the medical establishment. People got on as best as they could and mostly suffered and died. Now, people experience physical symptoms, are investigated, diagnosed and hopefully treated, and treatment is improving all the time. The same can be said for many physical illnesses, and thank God for medical science who believes in these illnesses and treatment is always improving.

Thankfully now there is finally more recognition of mental health disorders that can be so incredibly debilitating to not only the sufferers but also the families of the sufferers.

It's a shame that there are health care professionals still around who poo poo these conditions through sheer ignorance.

Oh and please stop thinking that OCD is only about cleaning. That is the Hollywood version of OCD. Real OCD is the cause of paralysing anxiety that has a huge significance for the sufferer's social and working life. It causes thoughts that simply do not go away, visions that make it impossible to carry out certain tasks. Or the compulsion to carry out tasks again and again in an attempt to control that anxiety. Try getting into a car and driving it when all you can see in front of your eyes are cars crashing and little children being hurt.

Despite this, it can take years for a sufferer to be diagnosed and even longer to get treatment.

Moondog,
If you wanted a proper discussion why did you word your OP so flippantly?

It's possible (though none of us can know from mere anecdote) that people are mis-describing everyday sadness etc as depression or something else, but that's their issue, and doesn't affect the validity of those illnesses as genuine diagnoses for many many people.

tiredlady's post is v. interesting. Is it possible that, as well as GPs readily giving anti-depressants because the waiting lists for therapies are so long it is effectively all they can do, governments are promoting the wider diagnosis of things like depression because it is easier and cheaper than addressing the social problems (poverty, housing childcare, unemployment) that put people in such desperation in the first place?

Whichever, the desperation is still real and I don't believe people should be left alone to suffer it without help.

EC;

It's moondogs style...she doesn't waste time...why say in 100 words what you can say in 10..?

She just makes her point quickly.

there is a difference between being concise and being flippant.

I think she suffers from flippant post disorder...better know as FPD...

...she is receiving help from her family doctor.

Fingers crossed for a speedy recovery.

Eldritch - in my previous health authority, there was almost no provision for the alternatives to drug therapy - or at least, what I was offered was derisory in the extreme!

As I said earlier, the only NHS provision that I got was three group sessions, one on anxiety, one on panic attacks and one on depression, and these where more like tutorials or study groups than group therapy. And anyhow, group therapy takes more than three weeks, because you have to get to know eachother, in order to be able to open up to eachother.

When ds3 was a baby, ds2 a toddler and ds1 had just started at school, I was offered a course of counselling, but at that point I was too depressed and mired down to be able to organise childcare each week - not that it would have been that easy to organise childcare for all three of them (unfortunately the course of counselling started just before the summer holidays), as all my friends had small children, toddlers and babies too.

Counselling was never mentioned again, even when it was decided I was suffering from depression outwith the PND. I did try using St Johns Wort, but that didn't really help me, so antidepressants were, and are, my only option.

I hate being on the tablets - they make me tired, slightly nauseated, forgetful and dull my wits, but they are better than the alternative.

Daftpunk - being concise and flippant is fine on a lot of occasions, but when it is on a subject like depression/mental health, it is worth taking the time, and using a few more words, to avoid causing distress and unhappiness to people who already have enough to contend with.

It is possible to be reasonably concise without being insensitive or thoughtless, and I don't think moondog has achieved that - nor does she seem overly worried that she might have upset people who are genuinely suffering, like myself.

MOONDOG - bit off topic here but I hope you're lurking about. A while back on a thread you linked to a product that was a bit like a pager that you could set to go off however often you wanted. Think it was on a thread about someone who wanted to change her behaviour/attitude towards her family.

Apologies if this wasn't you but if it was I'd appreciate the likn again TIA

For what it is worth, MD is usually very helpful and supportive on the special needs section of MN.

Perhaps wording was wrong or being taken in the wrong way.