How You Can Survive When They're Depressed: Living and Coping with Depression Fallout

324 Pages·1998·6.67 MB·English

by  Anne Sheffield

FORE\vORD BY MIKE WALLACE

YOU
how
CAN SURVIVE
THEY’RE
WHEN
DEPRESSED

YOU

h o w
CAN SURVIVE
THETRE

w h e n
DEPRESSED
Living and Coping with
Depression Fallout
ANNE SHEFFIELD
Foreword i»y MIKE WALLACE
Introduction by DONALD F. KLEIN, M.D.
THREE R I V E ID PRESS • *
To Mary, Howard, and my
daughter Pandora
Copyright © 1998 by Anne Sheffield
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in
any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permis­
sion in writing from the publisher.
Published by Three Rivers Press, New York, New York.
Member of the Crown Publishing Group.
Random House, Inc. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland
www. ran domhouse.com
THREE RIVERS PRESS is a registered trademark and the Three Rivers Press
colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
Originally published in hardcover by Harmony Books in 1998.
First paperback edition printed in 1999.
Design by Lenny Henderson
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sheffield, Anne.
How you can survive when they’re depressed : living and coping with
depression fallout / by Anne Sheffield ; foreword by Mike Wallace ; introduc­
tion by Donald F. Klein, M.D. — 1st ed.
Includes index.
I. Depression, Mental—Popular works. 2. Depressed persons—Family
relationships. I. Title.
RC537.S485 1998
616.8’527—dc21 97-40281
CIP
ISBN 978-0-609-80415-5
Contents
Acknowledgments vi
Foreword Mike Wallace vii
Introduction Dr. Donald F. Klein ix
1 A Problem Shared by Seventeen
Million People 1
2 The Five Stages of Depression Fallout 13
3 Beyond Love and Sympathy 27
4 On the Other Side of the Wall 49
5 Casting the “It” as Villain 68
6 Your Role in the Depressive’s Treatment 79
7 Will Psychotherapy Help Your Depressive or
Manic-Depressive? 100
8 Negatives and Positives: Losing and Regaining
Self-esteem 128
9 Setting Boundaries 159
10 Primary Targets: Husbands, Wives, Lovers 183
11 No Exit: Parents of a Child with a
Depressive Disorder 209
12 Innocent Victims: Children of a
Depressed Parent 248
13 Against Stigma, for Support 270
Appendix 1 Information Resources 289
Appendix 2 Medications Used in Treating Mental
Disorders 291
Bibliography 298
Index 301
Acknowledgments
In the course of writing this book, many depression fallout suffer­
ers have shared with me the personal pain and problems that loving
and living close to a much-loved depressive or manic-depressive has
brought them. Without their honesty and generosity, this book could
not have been written, and I am forever in their debt. I thank them
not only for sharing their emotions, experience, and solutions to
depression fallout, but for their overarching purpose: to help others
who suffer without support.
I owe much gratitude to The Mood Disorders Support Group of
New York City, which is a model of informed and supportive assis­
tance to both depressives and manic-depressives, and to their fami­
lies and friends.
My heartfelt thanks go also to the many distinguished psychia­
trists, psychopharmacologists, psychotherapists, and researchers who
have granted me their wisdom and insights. Above all, I wish to
express my appreciation to Dr. Donald Klein for his unflagging
encouragement and for the countless hours he devoted to reviewing
the manuscript for clarity and accuracy. His help enabled me to
transform an idea into a finished product.
Foreword
By Mike Wallace
One November day in 1984, I was fidgeting in my chair at the
defense table in a Federal courtroom in lower Manhattan, listening
to a plaintiffs lawyer do his best to demolish my credibility as a
reporter. I was on trial, along with some of my CBS News col­
leagues, on charges of libeling General William Westmoreland in a
CBS News Reports broadcast titled “The Uncounted Enemy: A Viet­
nam Deception.”
The broadcast said that General Westmoreland had “cooked the
books” in Vietnam in 1967, had failed to tell the American people
the truth about how many enemy troops were still out there fighting
us, and how many more were coming down from North Vietnam to
try to drive us out of the country. That triggered his libel suit.
I knew our reportage had been accurate, which nonetheless made
it no easier to sit in that drafty courtroom day after day and listen to
the general’s lawyer labeling us liars, cheats, and worse.
It was a bitterly draining five-month experience, that trial. I could
concentrate on nothing else, I was having trouble sleeping, I’d been
losing weight and in general was feeling lower than a snake’s belly.
My sleeping pills weren’t working, but my doctor told me to buck up,
that I was strong and resilient. He was wrong; I was feeling whipped.
Only Mary Yates, then my companion, now my wife of ten years,
knew what was happening to me, that I was sliding into a full-fledged
depression. I didn’t want to acknowledge to my pals at 60 Minutes
what was going on, nor did I tell my children; I was simply ashamed
of having to bear the stigma of that shameful word depression.
Finally—finally—Mary persuaded me to see a psychiatrist, who
promptly put me on an antidepressant medication, which dried my
viii Foreword
mouth and made my excretory functions dysfunctional. I was dis-
tincdy unpleasant company for just about anyone who came near,
but especially for Mary, who had to put up with my unrelieved glum­
ness and short temper. When I went to the office, I did my best to
camouflage all that, and thanks to the team I worked with I was able
to keep turning out reports for 60 Minutes, but they had to prop me
up to do it. They knew something was wrong, but they weren’t sure
just what. Meanwhile, I was getting no better.
It’s difficult to make others understand how desperate a deep
depression can make you feel, how lost, how cope-less, how grim.
And no light at the end of the tunnel.
And there is no way properly to describe the anguish that a
depressive can put his family through. Gloom, doom, no love, no real
communication, short temper, and leave-me-alone fault-finding.
Why more marriages don’t break up under those desolate circum­
stances is a puzzle, for you know deep down the damage you’re
doing to the ones you care about, the ones who have to live through
it with you and suffer from depression fallout, and yet you feel some­
how incapable of doing anything to lighten the burden for them.
I’ve been through two more depressive episodes, shorter ones,
since that first one back in 1984, which began to lift after General
Westmoreland finally withdrew his lawsuit. Both of the later
episodes were just as tough on Mary as the first, but at least we knew
what was happening the second and third times. That third episode
ended almost four years ago, and now I’m on a medication that I
intend to stay with for the rest of my life, for to my surprise and
delighted bewilderment, I have not felt so whole and so content in
years and years.
I recount all this, having just read my friend Anne Sheffield’s
book. Chances are you wouldn’t be reading it unless you or your fam­
ily or friends have been or are now faced with something similar to
what I put Mary through. It’s an extraordinary book, full of the
insights that come from the fact that Anne herself was a victim of
depression fallout. She has written a compassionate and mature
account of what can lie in wait for the legions who are captives of the
fallout from the depressive’s agony; she’s got it right, and believe me,
she’ll help you cope.