Postnatal Depression Quotes

She has been seeing a therapist for her postnatal depression and she has also been diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, that trendy ailment that celebrities blame for their bad behaviour.

In fact, they wanted to charge her not with infanticide but with murder. And so we found ourselves in the middle of a really difficult area of both the law and pathology. No wonder the office had been so pleased to hand me this case. Infanticide is manslaughter, and so carries a far lighter sentence than murder. It was introduced in 1922 for the prosecution of mothers who killed newborns under thirty-five days old. Back then, killing a baby was not considered such a terrible offence as killing an adult. It was believed that no baby could suffer like an adult victim and no baby would be missed like an adult member of the family. And it was well understood that one possible motive was shame at illegitimacy. We might discount this thinking today, but one important aspect of the 1922 Act has endured. The law recognized that there could be a ‘disturbance of a mother’s mind which can result from giving birth’, something which today we call postnatal depression – or its even more serious sister, puerperal psychosis. This view was retained by a new Infanticide Act in 1938. From then until now, a mother who kills a baby under twelve months old

Besides which, she was feeling much better–and she didn’t have postnatal depression–she’d always been a grumpy, bitchy type of person. That was just her.

But when you know better, you’re supposed to do better, not fiercely defend the old ways. Some more support, so that we can all navigate our way through processing our feelings and communicating effectively, even when under pressure, would solve so many issues. It has far-reaching consequences beyond Postnatal Depression. It is important for tackling domestic violence, alcohol addiction, and so many other big problems our society faces. But unfortunately, we have a large percentage of our population burying their heads in the sand. And that makes me sad.

This idealization of clinical perfection prevents us from being in the moment. It stops us from appreciating our experience as beautiful despite the “flaws” because, deep down, we are so ashamed of ourselves for not living up to these expectations of perfection that we can barely breathe. In

Having anxiety is kind of like being “normal” but without the ability to shake things off as quickly. You worry about all the same things that other people do, but then you continue to worry. Then you question yourself, your integrity, and your very soul, until you are rolled up into a little ball and howling. Suffering from anxiety is just like normal life but more so. It’s amplified normal. It’s super normal. I’m pretty sure what I’m saying is that having anxiety makes you a superhero. Yeah. That’s it. That’s the point I’m making. We’re all fucking heroes. Although

bad. I don’t write this to shame anyone who has lamented to me how they might end up in the nuthouse and just how fucked up it would be to go to the same place I went. Gee, thanks for letting me know what a loser you think I am. Or to shame the person who was so rude to me to try to cut me down at a pitching event. Although she should feel a little ashamed. I write it more to get people thinking and to start a conversation about the way people really view mental illness rather than the PC things they think they’re supposed to. We cannot start actually addressing people’s true feelings about mental health if we’re in denial about them. People often can say they’re okay about mental health and that they’re totally understanding about all the issues, but if someone said to them that they might have depression, their reaction is often akin to being accused of being a racist. Part

Many women are depressed postnatally, not utterly disconnected or psychotic. They love their kids; they just have zero resilience left. They put that beautiful baby to bed and then lie on the kitchen floor, sobbing uncontrollably until the baby wakes again, or they vomit. They can’t sleep for fear something will happen to their baby. They can’t unwind because everything they do, they are sure it is somehow wrong and ruining that little baby’s life. That baby that they love more than anything. Essentially, it is exactly the same as the fears all mothers have but times that by ten and never ever switch it off, not even for a cup of tea. Women with PND are just like every other mother, just more so. We’re not scary, we don’t need to feel ashamed, and we need compassion and support. And even if you previously thought you couldn’t understand us, you really can because we’re just like you. The

Invisible prejudice now visible. Societal norms dictate that people with depression are not capable people. And people who seek intensive help for it are cowards and should just soldier on… poisoning everything they touch. Treatment is for the weak; anger and resentment is for the strong. People in our liberated time say how they can’t believe how patients, even as late as the 1970s, were subjected to horrific treatments.

I try, but somehow I am always the woman in the wrong line. Lines are like a foreign language. You have to know how to read and to translate them. What looks to me like a thirty-second transaction invariably ends up as a tenor thirty-minute wait.

I release the shame, guilt, embarrassment and taboo or stigma that is attached to suffering from post-natal depression. I wear my war wounds proudly in hope that I can shine the light for those women and families who see no way out of the trenches. I speak out in hope of creating change in a condition that is widely misunderstood, to create opportunities for healing holistically and change the current model where women can get lost in the system, and can lose their lives battling this silent and very isolating dis-ease.

A single mother! I’ll put you on the watchlist for post-natal depression then!’.

Women who had often done little more than manifest behaviours that were out of feminine bounds (such as having a libido) were incarcerated for years in asylums. They were given hysterectomies and clitoridectomies. Women were locked up for having even mild post-natal depression: the grandmother of a friend of mine spent her life in an asylum after throwing a scourer at her mother-in-law. At least one US psychiatric textbook, still widely in use during the 1970s, recommended lobotomies for women in abusive relationships.62

It is difficult to know exactly how many women become unwell in the period before and after becoming a mother. In the UK, where I live, it was previously thought that 10–15 per cent of women develop a mental health problem in pregnancy or the first year of new motherhood – including mild and moderate to severe depression, anxiety, PTSD, psychosis – but more recent figures suggest it could be as many as 20 per cent of women. This means over 100,000 women a year in the UK become mentally unwell in matrescence. Globally, the prevalence of postnatal depression is 17 per cent. With two billion mothers in the world, this means over 350 million women experience perinatal mental health problems.

One profound therapy experience I had was with a mother who was experiencing postnatal depression. Her name was Mary and she felt alone, exhausted and deeply ashamed. Mary had recently had a baby girl, Louise, and at the time of Louise's birth Mary reported being extremely happy. She had always wanted a girl. However, not long after leaving hospital and arriving back home something changed. Mary was crying a lot, was feeling overwhelmed, had no energy and couldn't think. Worst of all from her perspective, she no longer experienced a sense of warmth for her baby. In fact, she felt no connection at all. I remember her saying, 'Mothers aren't supported to be like this. There is something wrong with me. I shouldn't be a mother.' Yet the very reason Mary was in therapy was because she wanted to be able to do what she felt she was supported to as a mother. To me this is an example of heroic compassion. Mary was depressed, and depression robs you of your emotions and leaves you feeling hopeless. Yet Mary was trying to find ways she could improve her health so she could be there for Louise so she didn't suffer. In Mary's own suffering, all she could think about was being there for her baby. This example shows that compassion is not an emotion. Mary wasn't experiencing warmth and feelings of love for her child, yet she was motivated to act so that she could prevent her child's suffering. And, after months of therapeutic work those feelings of warmth returned.

It’s so difficult that mothers in some foraging cultures (as well as mothers of other allomothering species) will abandon their newborns if they perceive that they will not receive sufficient allomothering support. The prevalence of postpartum depression has much less to do with postnatal hormones (a common myth) than with how legitimately depressing it is to care for a baby without enough help.