Depression is common. It affects so many people that it is referred to as the “common cold” of mental illness. Without our own statistics, if we follow international statistics, a debatable subject, about one in ten Trinidadians is depressed. If you watch local TV or listen to the talk shows and our politicians regularly, you become even more depressed. There seem to be a lot of mental colds in T&T right now, just before the coming economic boom and the great leap forward into 2030 which is going to solve all our problems, with the help of our latest foreign allies, El Presidente and his Dragon.
Depression seems to be more common in women. Approximately 25 per cent of women and 12 per cent of men will experience a serious depression at least once in their lifetimes. Among children, depression appears to occur in equal numbers of girls and boys. However, as girls reach adolescence, they tend to become more depressed than boys. This gender difference continues into older age.
No one knows why women are more likely to become depressed than men. The figures may not be true. Men may simply be less willing to acknowledge emotional problems or more apt to drown their sorrows in rum. So are male alcoholics really depressed?
There is also a feeling, common among the uneducated, that depression is a sign of personal weakness or a character flaw. “Real men” don’t become depressed. They get drunk, lift weights and beat women.
Women are under more stress than men. Woman, wife, mother, housekeeper, washerwoman, cook, lover, secretary, doctor and driver. At the end of the day, you have to look nicer than the “lil ting” down the road. Not to mention those horrible hormonal changes during the menstrual cycle, during and after pregnancy and during menopause.
But any red-blooded Trinidadian man or woman knows the real reason why people become depressed. Just listen to any local radio talk show. It’s called “horn”. Or as one foreign “expert” described it in the psychiatric literature, after spending a year in St Ann’s, the “Tabanca syndrome”, preferably pronounced “Tabancor”, the same way some of the regulars talk on radio.
It’s really all about loss. Loss of a loved one, whether through death or separation or a breakup, is often what triggers off a bout of depression in a susceptible person. For example, the most significant event related to depression is separation from or death of a parent before the age of 11.
Depression in mothers is even more common. So much for the myth that children make their parents happier. It’s just not true in all cases.
Is there something that women lose when they have children? Their youth? Their ambitions? Their hopes? Or is it just more pressure? As many as one in five mothers who bring their children to the doctor for minor complaints are depressed. A number of these moms are suffering from major depression to the extent of having suicidal thoughts. Many of them express their depression by complaining of physical things, like sleeplessness, back pains, headache or bowel problems.
Maternal depression does not only affect the mother. It affects her children. Specifically, it affects their social and language development.
At age three years, children of depressed mothers have more behaviour problems, like temper tantrums, sleep disturbances or destructive behaviour, than children of non-depressed mums. They also speak poorly and understand a lot less.
Depressed mothers also tend to blame their children for their own depression and to see their children’s behaviour as something that is either wrong with the child, or something that the child was doing on purpose specifically to get at them.
Children of depressed mothers are at huge risk of becoming depressed themselves when they become adults. Fortunately, this does not always happen. There are many other factors at play, like the extended family.
When there are other adults around, someone can take up the slack and we all have memories of the kindly old uncle or auntie who was there during a particularly difficult period of family life.
No one knows why a depressed mother can produce a depressed child who goes on to experience further depression later on in life.
It may be a genetic predisposition. Or it may be the effect of stress hormones on the developing brain. The main cause of stress in a baby or child is separation. Separation from the mother. It may be that experiencing great separation anxiety as children, these adults may be more likely to have low self-esteem, feel powerless, and become dependent on others to make them feel good about themselves. Whatever it is, the cycle of depressed mothers-depressed children-depressed adults deserves to be discussed more than it usually is.