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This past week, the country of Germany mourned the death of footballer Robert Enke. Details were sketchy at first but as they emerged, the portrait of a man so shaken by the dark stigma of depression he felt he had nowhere to escape to but to the arms of death became tragically clear.
In 2003, Enke was first treated for depression. 2006 saw the loss of his natural daughter to a rare heart condition. Yet still he refused treatment even as the son of a sports psychologist, carrying knowledge with him that help was within arms reach. His wife even stepped in to help with transporting him to training. She rallied around him to help him heal as they journeyed forward after the death of their natural born daughter. Eventually they adopted another daughter. The adoption brought with it a common fear faced by many adoptive parents. Enke feared losing custody of their new child, spurring new excuses for Enke to remain silent. He could not bear the thought of losing yet another child.
Post Adoption Depression Syndrome (PADS) is not as uncommon as one would think. It is certainly not uncommon given the history Enke had behind him although any adoptive parent faces the risk of developing PADS after adoption. According “Post Adoption Depression – The Unacknowledged Hazard” by Harriet White McCarthy over at Adoption Article Directory, 65% of parents she polled admitted to experiencing Post Adoption Depression but sadly, only 8% of these same parents had even been told about the possibility of PADS. This leaves an unacceptable 58% gap of uninformed parents.
While not as severe as some of the Postpartum Mood Disorders birth parents may experience, PADS is not something to be ignored either. Contributing factors can be unexpected coping behaviors from children as a result of abandonment or neglect, lack of instant bonding, medical complications, language barriers and lack of not taking enough time to adjust to the adoption. Natural parents may typically take anywhere from two to six weeks to adjust to the birth of a child. Adoptive parents should take the same amount of time to help alleviate the stress of the life change as well as cope with the additional stress of any travel associated with their adoption. It is not natural to expect to pick up your child on a Saturday only to return to work on Monday. Time should be allowed for bonding and family development and in this author’s honest opinion, even more time should be allowed for adoptive parents.
One of the biggest barriers to treatment for Post Adoption Depression Syndrome is the fear of losing custody of the child for which these parents have fought so hard to push through. Essentially these are parents who have literally applied for the job and gone through several hoops while seeking approval. To admit depression is to admit failure – much as if someone were to apply for a job, get the phone call, go into work and realize they were in way over their head. In the corporate world that wouldn’t go over well.
In the footballer’s world, admission of failure either physical or mental is also a big blow. The fans in this sport are harsh and would tear a player apart if he weren’t the perfect picture of both mental and physical strength. Beyond the loss of his first daughter, his previous issues with depression and his fear of losing his second daughter because of his depression, Enke also carried the weight of portraying a perfectly strong man to the world outside his door. Tragically it turned out to be too much for him to handle on his own.
Men are expected to be indestructible pillars of strength and often doubly so once fatherhood zooms into the picture. It is okay to not know what you are doing. It is okay to ask for help. In fact, knowing when to ask for help is a sign of courage.
Enke’s suicide note indicated he had withheld information from his loved ones and caregivers during the last few weeks of his life so he could carry out his plan. If you or a loved one are thinking of suicide, please call a suicide hotline and talk to someone. If you think you may see signs of suicide in a loved one or even in yourself, click here for a list of signs. Remember, not all signs have to be present in order for suicide to be a possibility. Also be particularly watchful as a loved one begins to heal from depression. Often it is when they begin to improve that suicide occurs because they are finally well enough to carry out their plans. It is also important to note here that men are four times more likely to be successful with suicide attempts than women despite making less attempts, according to Dr. Thomas Insel over at Depression: Out of the Shadows Ask an Expert.
Whether it’s a Postpartum Mood Disorder, Post Adoption Depression Syndrome, Paternal Postnatal Depression or just regular depression, remember that there is hope. There is light. There is another way out. You deserve hope. You deserve light. You deserve to live all the days of your life to the fullest. Do not continue to suffer alone. Reach out for help. It’s only a question away.
Turns out men are less likely to seek help for depression or other light to moderate mental health issues than women. Normally this type of behavior is attributed to cultural differences but this result crossed cultural boundaries. Researchers surmised this behavior may be due to social gender expectations. Men may fear being stigmatized and exposing feminine emotions by seeking out help for mental illness issues. Researchers also discovered professional anchorage may have something to do with the desire for seeking mental health care.
The reason this particular study is so important is because although women have a much higher rate of suicide attempts, men have a much higher rate of successful suicide. If men were more comfortable with seeking help their suicide rate would drop. Men are more likely to use violent and agressive methods of suicide which may account for the vast disparate in completion rates between men and women. Women are also more likely to talk things through with friends and loved ones than men.
The key point to take away here is that if you are male and struggling with depression please seek help. You owe it to yourself, your family and your loved ones. Mental health services exist for everyone and should be completely confidential. If you wonder about your rights as a mental health patient you can click here for a copy of your rights.
Colic. Every parent’s nightmare.
At the hospital, everything’s cool. Baby coos, you ahhh, nurses help.
But once you bring baby home and through that front door, you’re all on your own. Heaven help you once all hell breaks loose.
Baby’s screaming, your bladder is full, tummy is rumbling, the dog has to go outside NOW, the phone starts to ring, the UPS guy is dropping off a super-belated gift from Aunt Martha, and oh yeah, the cable guy is here because for some reason the cable isn’t working. And don’t forget dear little Tommy banging his plastic chiming hammer against the china cabinet while contemplating peeing in the floor along with the dog (who, by the way, is now barking up a storm at the UPS guy knocking on the door).
Once you get the UPS package inside intact, ignore the phone (that’s why you have voicemail, right?), take the dog AND Tommy outside to pee after strapping the still-screaming baby to your chest, you start to breathe again. Sort of.
Three hours later, baby’s still crying and you’re half-way to bald as you desperately google “How to make a baby stop crying.” Change the diaper. Check. Feed. Check. Burp. Check. Rock. Check. Sing. Check. CHECK CHECK CHECK!
A colicky baby is enough to make even the sanest of parents wish for a pair of Bose Silencing Headphones. But they’re the lucky ones. Yes, I said lucky ones.
You see, depressed parents are almost two times more likely to have a colicky baby than non-depressed parents. Hey – kinda like hitting the lottery, right? But wait – does the colic cause the depression? Nope. According to Mijke van den Berg, a child psychiatrist at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, the parents were screened for depression before birth.
So what’s the deal then?
Dr. van den Berg states that her study is not definitive and more information is needed to draw a firmer conclusion. But the conclusion to me doesn’t really seem fair to depressed dads. It lays on an even bigger guilt trip. Or perhaps this would serve as motivation to seek therapy if your wife gets pregnant – yanno – to avoid the whole unexplained screaming for more than three hours a day baby thing. Wouldn’t that be the chivalrous thing to do, especially if you’re the one working?
By the time baby gets here, moms and dads are already worn thin. Why on earth would we get a colicky baby to top things off? For fun?
Bottom line here folks, if you’re feeling gloomy, angry, irritated or upset and finding it’s interfering with your daily routine for more than a couple of weeks, please seek help. Talk to someone, anyone. Even if it’s a casual mention to your wife’s OB. He or she may be able to refer you to a trained professional. It’s not shameful to get help. It’s powerful. It’s the right thing to do…for you and for your kid.
Esperanza, a magazine dedicated to providing hope and coping skills for anxiety and depression, addresses male depression in their Spring 2009 issue. They are also asking for men to share their experience with depression in their Sound Off section.
Chuck Schultz bravely opens up in the article about his struggle with depression. It’s definitely worth a read.
A few days ago, I came across a wonderfully open and transparent post written by a husband about his wife’s experience with a Postpartum Mood Disorder over at the Hidden Sage blog.There’s a tremendous rarity to his post though – his wife unfortunately suffered from sexual abuse as a child, something which has raised her risk factor and level of struggle with her Mood Disorder. They’ve used a psychiatrist along with a naturopath for treatment as well. I’ve obtained his permission to repost his story here and I sincerely hope it will help other men who may find themselves in this rare yet real scenario. Thank you for your gracious permission and your bravery in sharing your story with us.
My Wife’s Cycles
My wife has her ups and downs, and if her downs aren’t carefully monitored she can easily crash. She has crashed before; one major crash happened a few years ago after she gave birth to our daughter. At first she just seemed sad and down, but nothing in her behavior was particularily all that worrisome. Then her sadness started to appear more and more like depression. Soon afterwards she started having violent and suicidal thoughts. She’d tell me how she’d get thoughts of violently throwing our kids against the wall, how she just loses it when they’d cry, how she isn’t cut out to be a mother, etc. Her mental state was fragile; her post-partum was just getting worse and worse.
Back then I used to spend half my time at work worried about what my wife was going through. The minute I got home I’d take over. I’d feed the kids, change their diapers, spend time with them and put them to sleep while my wife would go out in an attempt to get her mind off things. More often than not, I was the one that would get up at those post-midnight hours to tend to our kids. She’d be worn out, irritable and hating, and I’d be much too worried about both her and our kids.
Neither of us understood the realities that lie beneath post-partum. We both thought that she would overcome it in due time. By the time we eventually decided to start seeking professional help, she was a mess. Professional help made a huge difference to her; it took her out of her depression. Between the psychiatrist and naturopath her mind and state were gathering back together into something less fragile. Her violent thoughts cleared away, her spirit rose, and she was getting back into her old self. Well, almost.
During the healing process my wife had to come to terms with her reality, and it brought back a lot of her past childhood issues. There were things about her that she needed to confront, but never did. There were traumatic events in her life that no one ever did anything about, events that went beyond her never being raised with one of her parents for more than a couple of years at a time. Her parents divorced soon after she was born and her mom left her with her dad, who in turn left her with his sister. She kept going back and forth between living with her aunt and her father, both of which lived in different countries, until she eventually ran away to her mom during her college years. Those were, however, not the worst of her childhood issues.
She was first sexually abused when she was 6 years old by one of her uncles during a family summer vacation. She was much too young and confused to know what to make of it all. As she grew older other men around her started to take advantage of her as well, at that young age, she didn’t know how to react. Some of those sick men were her father’s best friends and others were her uncles. This sexual abuse lasted for six years, until she was 12. At some point she had attempted telling her step-mother but got a slap across the face in response. To her parents she was just coming up with stories and calling for attention. When she eventually ran away to her mom’s, her step-father took advantage of her. None of these issues had ever been confronted or resolved. I hadn’t known the magnitude of her childhood traumas until after she had started going to the psychiatrist.
Coming to terms with all that had happened to her took a lot out of both of us. I confronted her father, mother and step-father when I found that they weren’t responding to her raising the issues of her past. I cut myself off from her family for about a year. Their reactions and responses to what she told them infuriated the both of us. It took a lot out of her to mend her relations with her parents after what they had done. Her step-father, however, wouldn’t dare show his face around either of us ever again.
My understanding is that people who were sexually abused as kids tend to have major identity issues. They struggle to figure out who they really are and what they’re about. Whether or not that’s the case with all sexually abused people, it’s definitely my wife’s reality. Every now and then she goes through those periods of confusion. They can last anywhere from a week to over a month, depending on how we handle it.
Our naturopath helped us out a lot. She put a lot of effort and time into helping my wife out, and she was basically the only one my wife would go to once she stopped seeing her psychiatrist.
My wife’s cycles still persist and although they’re far less intense than they used to be, the cycles are still a matter of concern to both of us. I’m planning on taking her to Amen Clinics early on this summer and checking up with her psychiatrist once again in the meantime. Although the naturopath was of great help, I think she needs the help only medical therapy can offer.
She’s been going through one of her down cycles for a couple of weeks now. It was peaking a little over a week ago and she now seems to be coming out from it, thanks to our naturopath’s continual free follow-ups. We have decided though, that from now until we head to Amen Clinics, she’ll be going back to seeing her psychiatrist.
There are obviously a lot more layers and issues that affect my wife, but none of them have been as devastating to her as her sexually abused past. It’s always a hurtful experience to see her going through her downward cycles, especially when she’s still unaware that it’s actually happening.
Check out the article, Managing Depression, at The Father Life by Stanley Popovich. It’s a short, quick read that gives three techniques on how to manage depression as a father!
This one gets personal and brutally honest for me.
I am recovered from Postpartum Obsessive Compulsive/Depression. It’s taken some time and been a very hard and long road. The darkest depths witnessed me collapsed on the floor sobbing in tears after yelling at my husband in front of our then two year old daughter, fleeting horrible images racing through my head every waking moment, curled in the fetal position rocking back and forth willing myself to stay there so that I wouldn’t hurt myself or my children, and admitted to a psych ward.
The lessons I learned? Absolutely invaluable. While I wouldn’t wish my experience on anyone else in the world, I know that it was priceless and has truly carved me into the woman I am today. I know now that I cannot control what others think of me and I cannot give them permission to hurt me. I know now that God is with me and I feel his presence each and every day. I know now that I stand strong and breathe deeply because of His sacrifice for me. And I know that I will not let another family struggle the way mine has if there is something I can do to prevent that from happening.
All that said, my journey and growth is not yet over. Yes, I am recovered. But now it is my husband’s turn to collapse and my turn to support him, to show him the same compassionate understanding, loyalty, and guidance he showed me when I too couldn’t tell which way was up.
My husband was a drug addict when I met him. At the time I thought it was merely recreational and did not realize how deep his problems went. The use became worse after our second daughter, again, unbeknownst to me. Nine months ago I was involved in a car accident and quite a bit came to surface. He had been spending nearly $100/month on his habit while we were struggling to barely pay our bills. He hadn’t paid our vehicle insurance and I went to jail for his mistake. Together we hammered out a plan and got him to a therapist, a psychiatrist, and a faith-based recovery program. He is still sober today.
But we are now in what we’re calling phase two of recovery. Dealing with the nasty habits the drug use hid and the habits that are residuals of an addict like lying. We’ve lost just about everything and yet we still have faith and know that we will come through this – as long as we work at it together – something we both excel at. Give us a crisis and we can power our way through it in now time. This time around is a little harder and I am certainly shaken to my core. We have a lot of hard questions and choices ahead of us but I have no doubt that no matter what the answer is, we will both be able to survive.
The reason I tell you all of this is to ultimately introduce my husband’s new blog to you. It’s entitled Diary of a Real Man. He’s posted his first entry tonight and I would really encourage you to go check it out. Share it with others including any men in your life that may be facing similar circumstances and just need to know that they are not alone.
I would also encourage you to visit Married to Depression for a wife’s insight into what it’s like to live with a man who’s depressed.
Postpartum Dads Project 