Stop Asking Her If She’s Depressed

I was talking with a new dad recently. Proud of himself. He’d heard about postpartum depression, so he kept checking on his wife. “Are you depressed? Are you depressed?”

Her answer: “No. I’m anxious. And you asking is making it worse.”

Here’s the good news. Ten years ago, most people had never heard of this. Today a husband, a mother-in-law, a coworker over will say, “Oh, I know, that postpartum thing.” Awareness worked.

The bad news is it taught everyone the wrong name.

In my practice, most of the women who call aren’t depressed. They’re anxious. They’re not sleeping. They’re having scary thoughts they’re afraid to say out loud. They’re irritable, or angry, and they don’t recognize themselves. When someone asks “are you depressed?” they say no, and they mean it. And then nobody asks anything else.

The name we should use is perinatal mood and anxiety disorders: PMADs. Say it “P-mads.” It rolls right off the tongue. It covers pregnancy and the first year after. It covers anxiety, OCD, rage, depression, and more. It says what it is.

A better question for anyone who loves a new mom: “Since the baby, have you been feeling anxious, irritable, or not like yourself?”

And if she says yes, she needs to hear one thing. This is common. It’s treatable. Good moms get this, and good moms call for help.

When women call our center crying, I tell them: you’re going to be fine. You found us. We can fix this. So many of them have been carrying it like a life sentence. It isn’t one.

It took ten years to get people to know the word. Let’s not take another ten to fix it.