I can sit here and give out all the advice that I can possibly think of to help with postnatal depression, but if you’re in that bad of a place you simply aren’t going to care. This is why antidepressants are the first thing that I’m going to talk about as […]
For whatever reason, I’ve been a little reflective of my postnatal depression this week. I think it was down to the fact that I was actually on Twitter for the first time during a #PNDhour, (which is Wednesdays between 8-9pm) and I obviously got talking to a bunch of people about postnatal depression. So I thought I’d sit here and give an update on where I am now. Personally I feel like it’s important to not only hear about people’s struggle with PND, but also to hear something from those out the other side. After all, that’s what everyone wants, to be on the other side.
Due to the fact that this week has been #PNDAW17 I’ve found myself posting a few bits about that (here and here). But rather than do a video based on week 19, I’ve opted to do the vlog version of my postnatal depression story. So, if you fancy watching something instead of reading, […]
Postnatal depression, much like depression in general, is a horrendous, crippling condition. But it’s something that may have been developed over time to benefit our survival as a species. As much as we like to think we’ve come a long way since our ancestors of the Neolithic era, in reality, we’re not that different. Of course, our technology has drastically changed, but underneath the gadgets and the gizmos we’re still pretty much the same animal.
Having postnatal depression is crap. But, like many illnesses it’s not just the person who has it who suffers. It’s also the people that live with them that have to go through it as well.
That’s what happened to me. I didn’t suffer from postnatal depression, my husband did. I’m currently hijacking his blog to talk to you about what helped us through his postnatal depression. Luckily for me, or maybe not, I’ve grown used to his depression. He’s had depression pretty much most of our relationship, so I’ve been here before, but I wasn’t prepared. At all. Knowing him, and knowing that this was everything he wanted, since very early on in our relationship, it was an incredibly hard thing to watch and cope with. Still to this day, I’m not quite sure how I didn’t have a breakdown myself. Anyway, here’s my five things to help with someone going through postnatal depression.
It’s something that not many people give that much thought to, but postnatal depression affects somewhere between 13-19% of mothers, and around 10% of fathers (numbers vary depending on the studies). That’s quite a lot of people. So what I aim to do here is give a few ways that I feel, either from my own experiences or through research, may alleviate, or in some cases help prevent, postnatal depression. Due to the fact that I am a father, some of what I’ll say here is aimed more at other fathers as opposed to the mothers, but the majority of it applies to both. Here we go: