Mothers Can Pass Depression On To Children

Agreement with observations in the article

My mother suffered from depression both before I was born and after may birth. It did have clear effects, not only on me, but on the entire family. She also suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder, something that no one recognized or diagnosed unil I was in my fourties and seeing a Psychiatrist who was working with both of us, and for the first time helped me understand this part of my life.

I had observed growing up that many members of my family, paternal and maternal, suffered from depression, sleep disorders and other mental illnesses. For much of my life I was considered the sick one by my parents, something that Dr. D. helped me see was inaccurate and that the illness around me responsible for many of the effects on me and my life.

However, I feel that part of my problem is hereditary agrivated by environmental and relationship elements. From personal experience I agree that helping the mother, if at all possible, will give the child or children a much better chance of avoiding part or all of the mental illnesses that can occur.

At 59 I have lived with dysthymic deparession since the age of, at least, three. I have some memories of this time and they are all colored, or not colored, by the lack of color and happiness common to this illness. In order to be more complete I feel it needs to be mentioned that I also had episodes of severe depression over the years along with other psychiatric problems.

Depending on a persons view, I was lucy enough to never have needed to be hospitalized, though all the psyciatric problems did limit my life and success. Happiness as other people, generally experience it, has always eluded me but it was reassuring to find that I was and am not alone in this.

It is important to me to add that I feel no anger or bitterness, except on rare occassions, toward my family. They did their best with what they had to work with from within themselves and the environment and relationships that impacted their lives. I always felt that they loved me even when our communications were lousy at expressing that caring both verbally and often physically.

I had parents who cared enough to enter therapy in order to help me and I was, and am, happy that it helped them as much as it helped me.

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