Tracy Thompson

This book was just what I needed. Tracy Thompson is a journalist. She is also a daughter, a wife, and a mother. She has been all of these things successfully, despite living and struggling with crippling depression and anxiety. In her second book, a follow-up to her memoir detailing her battle to learn to live with her disease, Thompson has examined the effect of motherhood on depression. She surveyed and interviewed hundreds of women, narrowing it down from thousands of responses, and in the Ghost in the House presents the information she learned from these women, history and science.

Only recently has depression, and in particular post-partum depression, begun to be accepted as a real problem. However, Thompson contends that it is even worse than that. Post-partum depression is usually defined as the onset of depression in the year following the birth of child and tends to be attributed to the extreme changes and fluctuations in hormones. But what if there is something more, what if depression is something that continues to linger, crippling a woman's ability to be a mother. The author calls this maternal depression.

From my experience she is spot on the money. What started for me as PPD has morphed into a depression that hasn't abated. These should be years that I cherish, raising my three young boys, lucky enough to be able to stay home and watch them grow up. Instead, I struggle to get out of bed in the morning, scream, cry, throw things, and isolate myself. I hate myself for feeling this way, and yet I'm powerless to stop it. What this book did for me though, was to show me that I'm not alone. Unfortunately it has also taught me that my children are at a very high risk for inheriting my disease and behaviors. I'm only the latest in a long history of depressed women in my family and I already see my oldest beginning to fall prey to the same beast. Thankfully, this book also shows me that I can live with this. I can change turn things around for me and my kids.

My only complaint is that I wish this book offered other solutions besides anti-depressants, therapy, and friendship. Yes, I know that this is the best way for many to solve their problems, but I also feel like there should be more resources available. Forcing yourself to go make friends when you can barely get out of bed in the morning is nearly impossible. Therapy and medication can be cost-prohibitive for many. I just feel like there is something more and because she seemed to gloss over the solutions, focusing instead on the problem, this information seemed to be lacking.… (altro)

What a difficult book to read, and yet, it seems to have been helpful to me. Admittedly, I have a deepseated need to make sure *my* mother, who struggled/struggles with anxiety & depression, never reads it; I don't think I could handle her guiltridden reactions.

Anyway, Thompson conducted both survey research and some in-depth interviews with mothers identifying as having depression (recruited from the readership of O: The Oprah Magazine and some newspapers. She incorporates with that her own experiences as the daughter of a woman with depression, a mother with depression herself, and the mother of a child with depression. Sometimes that's good; sometimes it's a bit Too Much. (For instance, her struggles with breastfeeding clearly tint her attitude towards breastfeeding in the depressed mother.)

There's a good deal of scary stuff here, about the long-term effects of depression in the mother genetically and behaviorally on the children. The stories of the pain, exhaustion and frustration of depressed moms would get Pollyanna herself a bit down.

But there's also hope here. "One of the many great things about children is that they can learn from your weaknesses as well as your strengths..." (What a great chapter title: "How your struggles with depression can make you a better mother.")The author matter-of-factly talks about tools that she and her interviewees have shared for dealing with being an appropriate parent while depressed. Unlike many books, this one touches on the tendency in depression to be exhaustedly super-irritable, as well as too exhausted to get out of bed, though there was less attention paid to the irritable side. For me, the emphasis on making sure to get appropriate care (at whatever level one considers appropriate), on the ways that mothers trying to tough it out can fail for both mother and child, was helpful also. The admission that most pop self-help 'optimism' peddled today is pretty fake and the experience of dealing with doctors can be incredibly frustrating was reassuring. [Thompson points out one of my pet peeves: the current emphasis on incredibly close child supervision and attachment parenting can make things harder for exhausted, irritable depressed moms to cope.]

In conclusion, this probably isn't the book to read if you're in the great trough of depression, unless you're so hungry for honesty on the subject that one more "cheer up" will cause you to beat someone's head in (except you're too tired). However, it is a helpful book for those who have chosen or are in the process of choosing to be a mother despite struggles with depression, and perhaps for those seeking to understand what it was like to be a depressed mother (though if you're still pissed at your mother, maybe not so much). It is also a helpful source for coping mechanisms-- though a shorter, more concise list of suggestions might be helpful when in the throes.… (altro)