Depressed wife

My dear sweet wife of 10 years needs your thoughts and prayers. She is deeply depressed and I cannot seem to get her out of it. I took her to the doctor and they put her on a medication for the depression and a sleep aid since she has not slept in a while either. I never imagined it could get as bad as it has but here we are, bickering, not talking and I am not the reason she is depressed. The medication seems to help sometimes but her mood will flop so quickly it can be hard to read her. When she is down I can’t get her to talk or respond to me and it only compounds the problems. She seems to be lost and there is nothing I can do to help her . So if you can just keep Jessica in your thoughts and prayers, I am so worried for her that it is making me feel sick, I have never felt so helpless.

 

sorry to hear man, my ex gf was like that before too, and its really unpredictable on their moods. but i guess all you can do is be there and let her know all the time your there no matter what.

def keep her and you in prayer and hope everything goes well.

 

Thoughts and prayers are with you and your family. Good luck!

 

So sorry to hear. Depression can be caused by so many things. May not be just one thing it may be a lot of little things that have got her down. I will surely pray for the both of you. Just a couple of ideas to help. I have found exercise and sunlight and fresh air to be very helpful when ever I have felt down or others have. I am a firm believer in exercise. Keep us posted. Definitely continue to talk to her and just let her know that you are there to help her. Reassurance is always good and professional help does not hurt either.

 

Thanks guys, she is normally a very strong, and pretty independent person. That is one of the things I fell in love with in her and it is suddenly like I am living with a stranger. On the bright side there have been more good moments in the last week than bad so that is a move in the right direction...thanks again!

 

Keep the faith. Wishing you and your family happy holidays

 

What does she do for a living/job?
Are things going OK at work? What I mean by that is..... a job can really bring you down if things aren't going well, if you don't feel a sense of 'accomplishment', and your self confidence falls. You really need good things to happen to make yourself FEEL important. If her work isn't making her feel important anymore - then she could easily fall into depression.

That's my first thought..... but in reality, anything can cause depression.

And not to pry into your health life - but is she on any birth control pills, hormone therapy or what-not. Have you had kids? Has she had problems with depression before?

When was the last time she had a complete physical and blood work?

 

I know that sick feeling too well. Best of luck to the both of you!

 

Best of luck to you...just try and be supportive and perhaps take her out to dinner?

 

that she recovers quickly for both of you.

Is she getting exercise, fresh air, sunshine? All those can help a person feel better.

Like Janster said, when work sucks, it can make your life miserable.

Has she lost someone close to her and this time of year is when it happened?

 

Maybe Christmas will make her start feeling better, go drive around looking at X-mas lights.

I hope she starts to feel better soon!

 

Prayers and positive energy for Jessica.

 

She had a physical in Oct. and everything looked good, we have a son who is 12. I really beleive that this is entirely work related. Things have been really difficult and she just feels like a doormat. I am trying everything I can to get her out of there, she did submit her resume to a job placement company here so we will see. Unfortunatly with the time of year and the poor economy things are grim on the job front, of course only adding to her feeling of depression. She sees how it is affecting her and I and that adds guilt to it. I think she knows me too well and can see through my smile sometimes. I hate depression, I wanna kick it in it's depression junk. We go back to the doctor on Monday and that will be the two week mark so hopefully things will be looking better, she only has a couple days of vacation time left to use.


Oh and it is suppost to snow this weekend...Christmas lights sound good to me, she loves them too!!!

 

Sorry to hear, good luck, give her lots of slack, hope it's short lived for the both of you!

 

Prayers to both of you. My younger sister is currently suffering from depression as well as going through a divorce so I feel for you.

 

i'm actually a psychiatrist and while i cant offer specific medical advice i'd say that there's a couple of things i suggest to all my patients:

1. exercise, exercise, exercise. everyone can benefit from this. of course get a physical and make sure she's not going to injure herself beforehand. after that the more exercise the better. cardio tends to help more than anything else. this is one of the hardest things to actually convince my patients to do though so it may take some convincing.

2. speaking of a physical get the following tests done: tsh (thyroid marker), cmp (complete metabolic panel - looking at the salts in her blood as well as her kidney and liver function), cbc (complete blood count - anemia and other diseases can affect mood), lipid panel (for the sake of completeness)

3. has she been depressed before? every mood episode puts her at greater risk of getting another one. if you've had two in the past you're up to a 95% chance of getting depressed in the future so that'll do a lot of people in.

4. with regards to meds - they generally take 4-8 weeks to have effect on mood so its going to take some patience. that's assuming that this is strictly a depression issue. if she's been on meds before what worked and is she on something similar now? also if someone in her family responded well to one med then its quite possible that she'll do well on that too.

5. if this is strictly work related then you're doing her a great service in trying to get her out of there. obviously this is a shitty economy and that's not always possible so i wish you the best with that. i've got lots of patients with shitty jobs and if they can get out then i suggest that but if the alternative is unemployment well then things aint so easy as you well know. often a therapist in addition to a psychiatrist can be the real deciding factor. we have little time as psychiatrists to see everyone and talk about everything. we've got pressure on us to medicate and crank out numbers so that we can see everyone so if you can get a therapist through her insurance then go for it.

6. last, i'd say that even as a psychiatrist i have a lot of misgivings about psychiatry and i dont want to turn this into a debate on it because it will detract from the point of the original post which is that someone on here needs help. having said that though i'd say that there's lots of bad psychiatrists out there so try to find someone you have a good rapport with and feel good about. there's been studies about what gets people better and more and more it looks like its the relationship between the patient and psychiatrist is the healing factor so it matters big time.

7. ok so this is last, dude its not your fault she's depressed so dont blame yourself. just try to help and realize that sometimes things are out of our hands. good luck.

 

brother, I feel your pain. I too, have a spouse which suffers. It can make your normally happy home into a living hell, and you think "what did I do?" sometimes you start questioning yourself and your relationship, but alas, you have to look at the bigger picture. Good luck to you, my thoughts are with you and your spouse.

 

In my thoughts.

 

I feel for ya, man. Depression, especially if it's affecting someone you love, can really kick your ass. My girl has been on-off depressed for the past few years...you just gotta stay positive, and try not to let it get to you too much, because there's only so much you can do, and blaming yourself is not the answer.

But hey, it's gonna snow, right? Me and my girl'd be totally psyched!