The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children, and Struggling with Depression
272
The Ghost in the House: Motherhood, Raising Children, and Struggling with Depression
272eBook
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Overview
An award-winning reporter for the Washington Post, Tracy Thompson was thirty-four when she was hospitalized and put on suicide watch during a major depressive episode. This event, the culmination of more than twenty years of silent suffering, became the point of departure for an in-depth, groundbreaking book on depression and her struggle with the disease. The Beast shattered stereotypes and inspired countless readers to confront their own battles with mental illness. Having written that book, and having found the security of a happy marriage, Thompson assumed that she had learned to manage her illness. But when she took on one of the most emotionally demanding jobs of all—being a mother—depression returned with fresh vengeance.
Very quickly Thompson realized that virtually everything she had learned up to then about dealing with depression was now either inadequate or useless. In fact, maternal depression was a different beast altogether. She tackled her problem head-on, meticulously investigating the latest scientific research and collecting the stories of nearly 400 mothers with depression. What she found was startling: a problem more widespread than she or any other mother struggling alone with this affliction could have imagined. Women make up nearly 12 million of the 19 million Americans affected by depression every year, experiencing episodes at nearly twice the rate that men do. Women suffer most frequently between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four—not coincidentally, the primary childbearing years.
The Ghost in the House, the result of Thompson's extensive studies, is the first book to address maternal depression as a lifelong illness that can have profound ramifications for mother and child. A striking blend of memoir and journalism, here is an invaluable resource for the millions of women who are white-knuckling their way through what should be the most satisfying years of their lives. Thompson offers her readers a concise summary of the cutting-edge research in this field, deftly written prose, and, above all, hope.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780061744198 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Publication date: | 10/13/2009 |
| Sold by: | HARPERCOLLINS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 272 |
| File size: | 483 KB |
About the Author
Tracy Thompson is a freelance journalist and the author of The Beast: A Journey Through Depression. She lives in suburban Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children.
Read an Excerpt
The Ghost in the House
Motherhood, Raising Children, and Struggling with DepressionBy Tracy Thompson
HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
Copyright © 2006 Tracy ThompsonAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0060843799
Chapter One
What Is Maternal Depression?
Depression is the parent with the most power.
--Patricia E. Franklin, forty-six, of Stafford, Virginia,
mother of three, grandmother of one
There is an old red vinyl recliner in the den of the house I grew up in, and it is this chair that I remember her in. She is young in this memory, somewhat plumper than in those honeymoon pictures, but slender still. She wears glasses now, and her red hair, which is beginning to lose its luster, is pinned up severely off her forehead. I am folded up against her, my head in the warm hollow between her arm and breast.
"Flesh of my flesh," she says softly, talking to herself. She takes my hand in hers and turns it over, traces the blue vein beneath the skin on my wrist. "Bone of my bone." And in the wordless way that children know these things, I know she is sad.
Later, when I was older, I would come right out and ask. "What's wrong, Mama?"
"Nothing," she would say, her voice tight as a fist. She would not look at me.
"No, really, Mama. Tell me. What's wrong?"
"I already told you, Tace. None of your business." Leave me alone. So I did.And the free-floating anxiety of those unanswered questions wove itself into my earliest memories of her, along with the primitive body-memory of warmth and love that she gave in generous measure. There is no separating the two; they are warp and woof of the same fabric.
Depression is a fire in the brain that, once ignited, is hard to extinguish. It develops its own rhythm of flare-ups and remissions; for many of us, it becomes a chronic, lifelong condition. Motherhood is another lifelong condition: once a mother, always a mother. Which makes it strange that the term maternal depression is commonly taken to mean depression in women who have recently given birth--as if depression and motherhood could coexist only during those first few months.
So what is maternal depression--simply Depression + Motherhood? No. It's what happens when a mother's depression reaches out to ensnare her child. It's depression created or exacerbated by stresses common to motherhood, and--most important--it can be transmitted from mother to child via learned behavior, environment, genetics, or any combination of the three. Does being a mother and suffering from depression mean that you are a bad mother? It can, but it doesn't have to. A mother whose child-rearing days are behind her may suffer from depression, but her adult offspring are no longer the captive audience to her illness that they would have been as children. More important, a mother can suffer from depression, recognize it for what it is, and cope with it in ways that spare her children from its effects. In some ways, surviving depression and learning from it can make you a better mother.
We do not know exactly how many women in this country suffer from depression who are simultaneously engaged in the strenuous work of child-rearing. But in our culture, women are the primary caregivers for children, and we know that women make up roughly 12 million of the 19 million Americans affected by depression every year (a number that includes 2 million children). A few other statistics help give dimension to the problem. We know, for instance, that women suffer from depression at somewhere between one and a half and two times the rate of men. About one woman in every eight can expect to develop clinical depression during her lifetime. The forms it takes can range from a low-grade dysthymia that lingers for years, eroding quality of life the way rust eats metal, to the mental hurricane known as major depression. Finally, we know that the incidence of depression in women peaks between the ages of twenty-five and forty-four, which are, not coincidentally, the major childbearing years.
Now let us assume, somewhat conservatively, that roughly one-third of the 12 million women currently affected by depression in the United States this year have children at home. That's 4 million women who get out of bed every morning to face the daunting job of parenting while suffering with an illness that is at best debilitating, and at worst life-threatening. Let us also assume, very conservatively, that each of those women has 1.5 children. That's 6 million children.
Do these numbers seem inflated? It wouldn't be surprising if they did. After all, breast cancer will strike only 215,000 women this year, and it's in the news frequently. But cultural awareness doesn't have much to do with reality; actual risk can be dwarfed by perceived risk. Heart disease, for instance, kills many more women than breast cancer, but women tend to be more terrified of breast cancer than of a heart attack. Moreover, "normal" is not the same thing as "healthy." Consider infant mortality rates: what was "normal" in this country in 1900 would seem shocking today. So it is with maternal depression: if it's not a huge topic, perhaps this is because many mothers simply consider its classic constellation of symptoms--chronic exhaustion and/or trouble with sleeping, dysfunctional eating patterns, low libido, anxiety, loss of pleasure in life, constant feelings of guilt, an inability to concentrate--to be "normal." Ten years ago, more than half the women surveyed by the National Mental Health Association said they considered depression a normal part of aging, menopause, and the postpartum period, and more recent studies indicate that fewer than half the women who experience depression ever seek medical help. As one mother who suffers depression wrote to me, "We don't recognize it because we are inside it." Depression is so inextricably woven into the day-to-day experience of motherhood that simply recognizing it requires a cognitive leap as huge, and as basic, as a baby's first realization that she is separate from her mother.
Adding to the silence is the ever-present stigma of mental illness--and, for mothers, the formidable stigma of . . .
Continues...
Excerpted from The Ghost in the House by Tracy Thompson Copyright © 2006 by Tracy Thompson. Excerpted by permission.
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What People are Saying About This
A moving and deeply personal account....Thompson, a wonderful writer, shows how maternal depression can be managed and even overcome.
In this vital book, Thompson achieves the same level of nuanced insight that made The Beast so compelling.