The deep dark hole of depression

Any form of prolonged illness can cause untold suffering to a family or even strain it to the point of breaking up. It is even worse when the ailment is associated with mental illness, such as depression.

Ask Susan Catherine Keter. She has walked through the thicket of depression – which runs in her family – and come out on the other side to tell her story. She is lucky because her family has not caved in from the pressure of grappling with this heavy illness.

When depression set in, in 2001, Susan, a 42-year-old mother of six, was unable to carry out her motherly duties.

The illness must have found fertile ground in which to nurture itself earlier – in 1999 – when Susan was experiencing a particularly stressful period due to illness that had affected two of her children.

Critically ill

Her then two-year-old son had fallen critically ill and needed surgery. She was two months pregnant at the time and the constant worrying about her son weighed heavily on her and she developed high blood pressure.

She gave birth in November 1999, while still caring for her ailing toddler. But instead of the birth bringing joy, it brought more worries – the baby was born with a birth defect and had to undergo life-saving surgery five days later!

“Unfortunately, those who were close to me did not give me a shoulder to lean on. Instead, they were busy looking for reasons that might have led to the children’s illnesses,” says Susan.

Her marriage was affected because intimacy took a back seat. “I could not function as a wife. I suffered some degree of sexual dysfunction and this placed a lot of strain on our relationship.”

Before the depression, she was close to her children and a good wife to her husband, but things changed and she became highly irritable. “Every time the children played and made noise near me, I would scream at them to leave me alone,” she says.

As her illness started to take a toll on family life, her husband decided to learn more about depression. “He researched a lot on the internet and found helpful information on the disease,” Susan says.

One site suggested counselling, but this did not help much. “Some of the counsellors seemed to blame us for the difficulties in our marriage and family. They did not seem to understand the issues and we were forced to drop them.”

The symptoms of stress began to manifest physically. “I developed severe backaches and headaches, and I could not sleep at night.”

She was given sleeping pills and other drugs to contain her blood pressure and to ease the headaches. Later, she had numerous tests to establish whether she was depressed.

The results confirmed this and she was put on anti-depressants immediately, but this only made her put on weight and feel drowsy and tired all the time.

“My frequent sleeping did not go down well with some of my relatives who complained that I was just being lazy,” she says. To appease them, she stopped taking the drugs. As she struggled to get back on track, she discovered that she had to take the bull by the horns.

“I faced up to my illness and my personality handicaps and really tried to sort myself out,” she says of the illness that tormented her for almost six years. “My husband and I decided to seek psychotherapy help. It was difficult but we had to do it as we were determined to reclaim our family life,” Susan says.

She also overhauled the family diet after discovering that a diet high in fats and calories and low in whole grains, vegetables and fruits can increase the risk of depression.