Please help me to help my wife - she's a MNer

[MarriedToAMumsnetter]

My wife has been suffering with depression since our little girl was born 4 and a half years ago. She was not treated for it until a year ago. She has now stopped taking the anti depressants because they weren't working and they were giving her bad side effects. She was referred to a psychiatrist who prescribed a different anti depressant, but when my wife came off the ones she was on, she realised how much worse they had been making her feel and now she won't take the new ones.

The first tablets she was taking made her feel as if she was having electric shocks in her head every time she moved her head, that wasn't listed as a side effect but it's listed as a side effect on the new ones, and she doesn't want that again. She also felt that the tablets were making the depression worse instead of better, and that they were making her emotionless. She would rather feel something than nothing, even if what she is feeling is depressed.

She stopped the tablets about four months ago and was OK to start with but now the depression is back and she won't admit it. I can tell it's back, she is tearful and irritable all the time and she's so distant that I feel as if she's put a wall up between us. But every time I ask her about it she just says she's OK and changes the subject. I can tell she's not OK though, but I can't make her see that.

I don't know what to do. I know she had a lot of help on this board in the past but she got a bit self conscious about posting here and so she stopped. If I could just get her to talk it might help but she won't. I can't reach her to make her see how much I love her and want to get her better. What can I do to get her to help herself, how can I make her see what she's doing to herself, I can't force her to take the tablets but I need to do something.

She's out this morning so I have a little bit of time to ask you all for help. If anyone has been through this with their partner please help me.

I don't know how she would react to me coming here and talking to people she "knows" about it though. She might not be too happy that I had come and discussed it with you.

I probably shouldn't even have posted in the first place but I just want to help her.

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Yes, I have. I think that Enid has the trigger spot on, I think that our daughter starting school has tipped the balance again and I am going to use that as a starting point to try and get her to talk to me about it. I can only try.

I can't get to the GP to talk to him about it this week as I'm away as of tonight for the rest of the week but I a wondering whether he would talk to me on the telephone and make a note on my wife's file. She has to see him next month for some other medication she takes and perhaps he would talk to her about this then.

My wife tried some herbal tablets a bit ago, I think they were Saint Johns Wort but she didn't take them for very long. If she'll talk to me this afternoon I might rattle the box at her again and see if she would try them again.

If nothing else talking to you has made me feel a bit better about this, so thank you to everyone who has posted.

i've been on both sides of depression. i sympathise with how you must feel. but i also can understand how she is struggling. i think she probably knows how much you love her and how you worry. i remember on the one hand desperately wanting to feel loved and on the other not feeling worthy of any love. indeed, you can't force her to take tablets, the best you can do is understand. also, DP and i shared GPs and he really understood the situation. we both got counselling, but only after a very very long wait.
DP and i had the electric shock thing with the anti depressants we both took (efexor), but only when we took them a bit later than normal or when the dosage was reduced. i had a very hard time getting off them. DP stopped cold turkey as he had a stomach ulcer and it was dangerous for him to keep taking them. efexor did make me emotionless too. it made me feel nothing, just numb. which in a way is better than very depressed and suicidal.
take care {{hug}}

That sounds familiar lilacbump. My wife's low self esteem makes her doubt me sometimes although she says she knows I love her and would move mountains for her, sometimes she can't understand why I love her. She has had low self esteem for as long as I have known her, it's part of her and I am used to that, I;m also used to the fact that nothing I can say will change it.

The electric shock thing was the one thing that she hated about taking the anti depressants (Citolapam?), she was prescribed Effexor and it is one of the listed side effects of Effexor so she didn't want to take them again. She also felt emotionless and numb but didn't realise until she came off the anti depressants and began to feel again. So I can understand her not wanting to take tablets again. But I also know that she is not going to get better on her own.

try and get her to talk about it to you. You sound like a lovely husband

it may help once she starts making friends with a few other mums and getting involved in playdates etc - will give her a 'reason' to keep going IYSWIM.

Good luck. x E

there is a book that my counsellor told me to buy and most of the sessions we did were based on therapy used in it. your wife might find it helpful. it is called 'mind over mood' . i haven't got my copy anymore, otherwise i would send it to you, but i do still have some photocopies from it.

Thank you Enid. I wish I felt like a lovely husband, at the moment I feel pretty useless because there's not much I can do.

I'm hoping that she starts to make some friends at the school gate, she had a very nice mum around over half term with one of my daughter's friends and they seemed to get on quite well so I'm hopeful that they can form a friendship too. She is quite isolated and I think she's lonely too so hopefully you're right.

Thanks for that, Lilacbump. And thank you for all of your posts, I am very touched by your responses.

Hi Mtamn. Just a quick note as someone married to a person with long-term depression. I really feel for you both and you sound very worried.

Have you tried ringing her psychiatrist? You never know what they will offer. I am a medical secretary (to a GP) and every day I type and file letters that finish 'If anything changes let me know and I will see of course see x again'. They may need another letter from the GP - which of course means your dw admitting things aren't right and actually going to the GP - but you never know. It just might help.

Do go and see the GP yourself - this affects you too. They should allow you to talk about your dw at least, but if they will not - you meet the odd one who won't - try writing a letter to them. Possibly if your GP wrote to your dw asking how things were going and asking her to make an appointment, she might do so.

Also, did your dw ever have a community psychiatric nurse? If so, try ringing the Community mental Health Team and getting in touch with them. I am very pro these, partly because your dw may feel that all the psychiatrist talked about was medication, whereas the CPN might seem less focused on one issue. Also my dh is currently much better having gone onto a new drug recommended by the CPN not the psychiatrist!

If you want more info about trying to prod the system into life, particularly in mental health, you can 'contact another talker' (link at the top of the page) and I will try and get contact numbers etc for you. I'm afraid, though, that in the end your dw will probably have to acknowledge that things aren't right. The trigger thing sounds like a way in. HTH

Look sweetheart, you need to use this time today to contact the GP or they psychiatrist and make arrangements to to talk to them. OK you're away this week, but get your appointments sorted out NOW for when you can see them.

Go love, pick up the phone.

Just to let you know that I have rung the GP's surgery and spoken to a receptionist, the GP will not discuss my wife's treatment with me but he will be happy to talk to me about her illness and the way she is feeling. He will be able to make notes on her file to discuss with her when she sees him. He is going to call me back at the end of his morning surgery at 12.30, I just hope that he rings before she gets back now.

Thank you for that suggestion, I honestly didn't think that they would talk to me at all about her.

My sister suffered from PND after each of her three children but it never really got sorted out. She was on Effexor too but it didn't seem to do much good. She finally took herself off the ADs and although it was a bad few weeks she did finally begin to get better.

What then really helped her was a homeopath. Her depression and her migraines were all hormonal. He gave her a homeopathic remedy and although she then had 3 really bad days she hasn't looked back since.

There is a PND association with a website - they might be able to help you.

I think talking to your GP may help. As you say she has to go to him/her anyway soon so if he/she is forewarned they should be able to ask the right questions.

Good luck.

You sound like a wonderful,considerate and thoughtful man. I hope you and you wife get all the help and support you need-never feel scared to post-there are many mums on here who can give you advice and suggestions.

Thought you needed a big to make you feel better!

Good Luck!

Thank you, smiles are good and posting has actually made me feel a bit better. Plus some of the ideas that people have had have been really good and I am hopeful that I will be able to use them as a way in to talk to my wife.

The GP has actually rung me back already and I have spent 10 minutes or so talking to him about how she has been and why I am so worried. He can't tell me how he will handle it or how he intends to try and treat her but he has listened to me and made notes and he has promised me that he will speak to her when she goes to get her thyroxine next month. She hadn't actually told him that she had stopped taking the anti depressants, which has surprised me a bit, so he is going to ask her about them when she goes.

Thank you all so much, you have been really kind to me. My wife will be home soon so I may not be able to post again for a while but I just want to let you know that this means a lot to me and I am touched by your replies.

Good.

All the best.

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when i was on Ad's - i thought taking a tablet would make me feel better - it didn't it just stopped me crying - i felt exactly the same but i just was less overtly emotional about it - so people thought i was better. - sounds like maybe this is what your wifes feeling.

also have a good friend who has been on at least - at least 4 diff types of Ad's - she s suffered for 3 years. and eventually gave up on the tablets

only very recently through community phychiatric services she got to hear about a course in aromatherapy and such - she was very frightened of meeting new people and looking like a complete tit.

the other people on the course were people suffereing from depression - she found out she made some new good freinds, had a laugh, gained bags of confidence and some qualificatins to boot.

i dont know if you have any other children - but if you haven't been working and your kids go to school - you may feel like your place int he world is no longer needed - you would feel useless.

i think you need to get a local college prospectus and pick out a course she fancies - nothing hard - something fun - like pottery or painting or car machanics for women.

something that will get her a piece of paper validifying she can do it. that will enable her to meet new people and become familiar with a new environment.

it will boost her self esteem and much like a spinning top once you wind it up a little it will fly off on its own.

going back to my situation at the top - i did the same i went to college - mainly becuase it had a creche and to be honest i wanted away from my kids before i cracked up - but that was a major catalyst for me

HTH's

apni

This organisation are very knowledgable,and experienced in PND, and may even be able to put you in contact with another man whose partner has suffered.

It may be of some help for you as well as her.

Custardo, what a lovely post. Thank you, yes, that does sound like my wife. We only have the one daughter but my wife has not been able to work for the last 10 years so that would make a lot of sense. She may feel she's back to having no purpose again, and do you know, I should have worked that out myself. When she first came off the anti depressants and was feeling a bit better she was going to sign up for adult education classes, our local centre is on the same street as the school so no excuse. The only course she fancied doing was belly dancing but thought that she might get laughed at because she's quite large. Time to get the brochures back out, I think.

Thank you for the link, unicorn. I don't have a clue where to start looking for that sort of thing so that is helpful.

ggglimpopo, half of me is hoping that my wife will see this thread and realise what she is doing to herself. The other half of me fears that I might get thumped if she sees it though.

some more things i thought of that might help a little. i (and DP too) wrote in a journal (online but a paper one is great too) to express how i was feeling. sometimes it is hard to tell other people what is going on, this was a great way of recording moods and thoughts. btw we did read each other's journals.
we also had a system of rating moods. it would go from -10 to +10. if DP told me he felt -7, i knew it was bad. if he was 0, he was ok. anything above 0 was rare, but very much welcomed.
i agree with everyone else, you sound like a caring and wonderful man. your DW is very lucky to have you look after her like this.

I don't feel very wonderful. I feel pretty hopeless as a husband at the moment because she should be able to talk to me so that I can support her and for some reason she won't. I am just a man who loves my wife and I hate the fact that she seems so unhappy.

She is good at writing, it's something she always enjoyed but hasn't done much of for a while. I don't know whether she would let me read a journal if she wrote one though.

i recko belly dancing would be just the ticket - there were some belly dancers at our school summer fair - and kate moss they wasn't !

Marriedtoamn I used to take St Johns Wart about 6yrs ago now after coming off Prozac, they did take a few weeks to kick in but on the whole I would recommend them, they gave me a good lift and let me get on, I haven't looked back. My sister uses St Johns Wart when she feels down she was clinically depressed for about 2yrs after having 2boys 10m apart, she has been getting on brilliantly for the last 3yrs with the on and off help of St Johns Wart.

This is my dh, it's me he's talking about, I have just found this thread (as it seems I was intended to; the silly muffin changed my name to post and it came up under threads I'm on).

I can't believe that he posted this here, I don't know whether to be angry with him for posting or happy that he was trying to do something for me. I also think he's made it pretty clear who I am from one or two of the things he has said and I'm not too happy about that, it makes me feel a bit silly to be honest, to be posting away while people are probably aware that my dh has been posting this stuff about me.

It has made me cry that my dh has felt so affected by this. I have never meant to hurt him or our dd, I have never meant to be so selfish that I was oblivious to the way he was feeling. I know that I've been down again recently but I didn't realise how it has been affecting him and dd. I'm still not keen on taking ads anymore though, and I don't really know how to address this otherwise. I think that Enid is right and that this bout has been triggered by dd starting school in September; I almost feel as if my reason for existing has gone. I hate coming back into the house, it's so quiet and empty without her, and I keep wanting to go back and fetch her home with me. I know it's stupid and I know it's irrational but I hate that there is part of her life that is closed to me now, and that other people are beginning to replace me in her life.

I will talk to dh about this, I can't do it until later in the week because he's away on business but I know we need to talk and I will talk to him.