Concern about Wife's mental health

[Billbery]

My wife has been getting gradually more and more anxious and unstable for the last 10 years. She now has many 'bad' days, triggered by relatively small events that shouldn't have the impact they do (and I suspect wouldn't bother most people) but she then obsesses about them. I categorise bad days as where her anger, mood swings and shouting or tears create a negative atmosphere in the house and are quite often picked up by our son.
Sometimes we have weeks without a bad day, or bad days for a few weeks so it is not consistent.

These bad days are sometimes a pre-cursor to her period but not always. She has always been susceptible to mood swings around her period but nothing I would consider too extreme so I don't want to put her building anxiety down to this.
Her Mother is very anxious and worse than my wife (is this type of problem hereditary?) and when my wife speaks to her it can trigger a bad day so no help there and she has no friends now she can speak to about this now, just me.
She did go to her GP around 8-9 years ago who prescribed her some anti-depressants (she refused to take).

I'm not sure how to handle this situation.
I would like to tell her we will go to see the GP but I know she will get angry at me for even suggesting she has a problem and her way to solve these issues is to run away from them or ignore them.
I'm not sure if this is linked to an early menopause or is not linked to hormones at all and is just stress, anxiety and depression that has naturally increased with age.
She is in her mid forties, we've been together about 20 years but it can't carry on like this, she needs help.

Any suggestions please?

Hi there.
Ok, so I would talk to her about how she is feeling and if you can emotionally support her, non judgementally, and ask her if there is anything else you can do to help her.
Diagnosing her and fishing for reasons when you don't know what's going on and what the reasons are could lead to more problems and her feeling judged and overwhelmed.
Do you have a good , positive relationship in the marriage ? A lot of women internalise other people's stress and tend to gibpve too much of themselves to others over time, resulting in burnout and depletion. Could this be the problem,? Or is she unhappy in your marriage ?
Time to think carefully, see things from her point of view and start that conversation about how she is feeling.

And I really wouldn't start a conversation about her periods, nor how you can fix her.

Because unless she is has lost mental capacity, you can't force her to ' get help' , it is up to her.

Thanks Aintgotnospoapbox.
Our relationship is very good most of the time. We're normally a family team, supporting each other with the odd exception (such as these issues that trigger her mood swings).

Good point about forcing her to 'get' help and not discussing cycles.

We have discussed dealing with the small events that tend to set-off these episodes and she acknowledges she doesn't want to react the way she does but her solutions tend to regress to avoid the problems or run away from them which are really not practical and to me, would exacerbate the problem in the future.

I think you may need to give an example of a problem scenario.
And I get that you are trying to help her, and sort of fix her, but what about emotional support and love, and how she is really feeling, is she happy etc.

Hi,

I have a different take on things.

I have suffered from depression, anxiety and PTSD and I support my husband who suffers from depression and episodes of psychosis. So I can see it from both sides.

Supporting someone with mental health problems is hard. If her mental health problems are now severe enough that they are impacting on you and your son's quality of life and mental health then she has a responsibility to do something to address the issue. I would not have been able to continue my relationship with my husband if he had not accepted help from the professionals. It may be that you have to be that frank with her at some point. If she broke her arm and then refused a cast would it be acceptable for her to expect you to do everything for her for ever more because she couldn't use her arm.

ADs are one option but it would also be worth enquiring about councelling, cbt etc. If those things would be more acceotable to her. Theres also some medical conditions that can result in depression and anxiety e.g. vitamin D deficiency, so its worth your GP checking things out. Hormones definately can play a part in mood swings, you could suggest your wife keeping a mood diary, scoring out of for mood and anxiety each day to see if there are any patterns or triggers that she can identify.

Ultimately my advice to anyone supporting someone else is to put your own health needs ( mental and physical ) first, we can't support anyone else if we go under ourself. Believe me, I've been there.

My wife is emotionally abusive towards me. So much so, I'm not sure how much more I can take. The screaming and yelling has got to stop. What I say doesn't matter, and what I say is turned into me being accused of emotionally abusing her. Constant threats!!!
Need help like I never needed help before!