MY WOMAN CRY

I will start this note by asking you a question;

“What is the distinction between house wife and house maid?”

Probably you will wrinkle your forehead and widely smile, while starting mumbling these answers;

“Different title but the same occupation…”

“Different in paycheck…”

“One is worked by divine calling, one by pocket earning…”

“Sleep in different rooms”

“Yeah…, of course one is using ‘w’ letter and one is using ‘m’ letter...”

Most people said housewife isn’t an occupation. It just divine calling. Once you get engaged in marriage and not allowed to work by your partner because you are already have kids. Or it just your logical reason because you think motherhood is your divine calling. But, how if, being a housewife is an agony, as if you might recall this following story in daily news…

“Anik Coriah (31), the Bandung woman accused of killing her three sons, Abdullah Faras (6), Nazhif Aulia Rahmatullah (4), and Muhammad Umar Nasrullah (9 month) …, argues that God told her to do so…

Defense attorney argued that insanity was the only reasons why deeply religious mother who homeschooled her children would kill all of them without so much tears. “There was no cry,” her psychologist said. “She was insane. There is no other explanation.” Psychologist testified that Anik believed she was divinely chosen by God to kill her children as a test of faith. In a videotape played at her trial, Anik said she saw her youngest son play with a spear, hold rock and squeeze a frog, and took them all as signs from God that she should kill her children.”

And that case is not the one. I have more than 100 cases in Indonesia and thousands of them worldwide. In fact, some researcher found several thousand cases from 1990 to 1999 involving mothers who killed their children, and they had researched over 200 of them. Approximately, 10% of these women had killed more than one child.

Then, you perhaps asking me a question,

“Why would a mother kill her own children?”

Usual boring monotonic life can lead to depression. And major depression is the biggest contributor to the reason why would housewives kill their own children. Domestic daily cares are central activities that consume most time of the housewife. They have less time to do another thing, especially “me time”. Most of them have lack ability to socialize in their neighborhood, and have an introvert personality. It shows that their lives are tedious and miserable. Those indications can lead to depression, and major depression can direct to suicidal thought and even murdering action.

For woman in particular, depression is common. Martin Seligman, the founder of positive psychology, once ever said that “human race are in the middle of epidemic depression, the consequences are suicidal mood and suicide action. It takes so many lives, more than AIDS ever do. We are facing the world with 10 time depressed population than 50 years ago. And it takes women twice more than man, and consumes ten generation younger than ever before…”

According to National Mental Health Associations, approximately 12 million women in United States experience clinical depression each year. About one in every night women can expect to develop clinical depression during their life time. In Indonesia, the statistics even more horrifying. According to research conducted by Association of Mental Health Doctors, almost all of the population (98%) undergo minor into major depression, and half of them (about 48%) endure depression that prohibit to have full function life for about two weeks, and another 20% are diagnose having habitual depression in the rest of their life.

Women are about twice as likely as men to suffer from depression. This two to one difference persists across racial, ethnic, and economic divides. In fact, this gender difference in rates of depression is found in most countries around the world.

And so, another question flash into your head,

“What is depression, anyway? And why it attacks more women than men?”

If you’re feeling sad, guilty, tired, and just generally “down in the dumps”, you may suffering from major depression. Common complaint includes; depress mood, loss of interest or pleasure in activities you used to enjoy. If you have at least three of these symptoms, you are may be in high risk of having depression. Those symptoms are; feeling guilt, hopelessness and worthlessness; suicidal thoughts or recurrent thoughts of death; sleep disturbance (sleeping more or sleeping less); appetite and weight changes; difficulty concentrating; lack of energy and fatigue.

Although the sign and symptoms of depression are the same, for both men and women, women are tending to experience certain symptoms more often than men. For example, women are more likely to experience the symptoms of atypical depression. In atypical depression, rather than sleeping less, eating less, and losing weight, the opposite is seen: sleeping excessively, eating more (especially carbohydrate), and gaining weight. Feeling of guilt associated with depression is also prevalent and pronounced in women. Women also have higher thyroid problems, hypothyroidism can cause depression.

Then, the next question is…

“What are the causes of depression in women? Especially during motherhood…”

There are a number of theories which attempt to explain the higher prevalence of depression in women. Many factors have been implicated, including social and cultural causes, psychological and also biological factors, which women are heavenly designed differ than men.

Social and cultural causes of depression in women are involved role strains. Women often suffer from role strain over conflicting and overwhelming responsibilities in their life. The more a woman is expected to play as a magnificent mother and wife, the more vulnerable she is to role strain and subsequent stress and depression. Depression is more common in women who receive little help with housework and child care. Social and psychological burden is even harder when society still see that raising great children is women responsibility. It’s even vigorous when husband seems neglected his wives emotional strain. Minor depression looks as if nothing. When a mother fail raising children as society wants them to be, she become the black sheep.

Unequal power and status often be major problems among housewives. Women’s relative lack of power and status in our society may lead to feelings of helplessness. The course of this feeling such as, inharmonic relations between husband and wife, or maybe there are problems caused by extended family member. This sense of helplessness puts women at greater risk of depression.

Relationship dissatisfaction also contributes depression among wives. While rates of depression are lower for the married than for the single and divorced, the benefits of marriage and its general contributions to well-being are greater for man and for woman. Furthermore, the benefits disappear entirely for woman whose marital satisfaction is low. Lack of intimacy and marital discord are linked to depression in wives.

Psychological causes divided into two major causes. First is, coping mechanisms. Women are more likely to ruminate when they are depressed. This includes crying to relieve emotional tension, trying to figure out why they’re depressed, and talking to their friends about the depression. However, ruminations have been found to maintain depression and even make it worse. Men, on the other hand, tend to distract themselves when they are depressed. Unlike ruminations, distractions can reduce depression. According to Psychology Today, women are more likely than men to develop depression under lower level of stresses. Furthermore, the female psychological response to stress is different. Women produce more stress hormone than men do, and the female sex hormone progesterone prevents the stress hormone system from turning itself off as it does in men.

Biological contributors to depression are in pregnancy and infertility. The many hormonal changes that occur during pregnancy can contribute to depression, particularly in women already at high risk. Other issues relating to pregnancy such as miscarriage, unwanted pregnancy, and infertility can also play role in depression. Many new mothers experience the “baby blues.” This is a normal reaction that tends to subside within few weeks. However, some woman experience severe, lasting depression. This condition is known as postpartum depression. Postpartum depression is believed to be inflated, at least in part, by hormonal fluctuations. Women may be increased risk for depression during perimenopause, the stage leading to menopause when reproductive hormones rapidly fluctuate. Women with past histories of depression are at an increased risk of depression during menopause as well.

Your next question would be…

“How depression in housewives can affect their children, excluding murdering?”

Children grow and learn by modeling. They learn from examples are given by their environment, especially their parents, moms, as significant others. When their moms are in depression, children are commonly share the same psychological pattern. Children with anxiety mothers are more likely to have seven times higher chances to have anxiety disorder. The newest report comes from National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine in United States. This research said that one of five mothers in United States are having habitual depressions, and 15.6 million children under 18 years old live with adult which under major depression.

Commonly, depression in mothers not directly affected their children. But, several studies show that when the time mothers in depression, their children often have poor health, deviance behavior and emotional disturbance. Judy Garber from Nashville’s Vanderbilt University judged that preadolescent is the most vulnerable phase through depression. Garber reported that about one to five adolescence steps into depression when they reach 18 years old. From his study, Garber found that 316 participants confess that they have mothers in major depression.

Depression level in teenagers is come from the anxiety of their moms. They mostly have negative thought or overprotective with their children. Bryan King, director of Child Psychiatry in Seattle Hospital said that, child which have depression mother seem don’t have emotional support to flourishing their own self worth feeling.

One study hold by Loraine Bezaldine, M.D. in female brains indicates that depression is also transferred through generations during pregnancy. Woman with depression develop glooming reactions that produces hormones which affected the infant. Once the baby was born, their mom’s often having baby blues syndrome. These babies often grew up become introvert children.

Woman with depression often can’t cope their own emotional disturbance. This also affected their spouse. If this relations become worse and worse, it can leads to divorcing, and divorce parent can straight to depression on their children.

So, the next question would be…

“Is depression treatable?”

All these years, counseling in depression and treatment method commonly designed only for personal therapy. Even though, if depression is infected mother as housewives, most of family members are affected, as I have notice above. To determine the root of depression we often has to route to the whole family relation to each other, said Jane England psychiatrist from Regis College. Her studies provide new vision to treat depression, which provides holistic treatment not only for parent but also their children. Nowadays, professional mental health provider often includes the entire family member in therapeutic treatment; often the obstacles come from the women. Only one third women are asking for help to treat their depression. Most of depression is hidden behind the walls, until it burst to clinical action, murdering their children.

Women depression can affected the whole family even the society, so I suggest, the cure are also involving the whole community. I call this “holistic social support”.

You may ask the final question…

“Why should holistic social support?”

This approach not only provides curative action for women with depression, but also can provide preventive ones. With strong social support, community can notice which mother are having the higher risk to major depression.

As you can see above, most women which suffer depression are lack of social support. They often have to deal with day to day stresses all by themselves. This holistic social support is given housewives sense of bounding. Feeling to be accepted, wanted, and has live purpose in the community.

We develop holistic social support from their origins. Such as, “arisan” or “pengajian.” In those activities, women are already bounding in certain activity. We just added what was the lack on their process. We notice that in those activities originally focus only in one purpose, and often miss guided as gossips forum. So, we enter these communities by asking them what they want most in their daily life. After so many rehearsals, we found several aspects that can develop in this local environment. The aspects are spiritual, emotional, aesthetic, intellectual, social and financial.

We are developing activities which can expand their interests, in those aspects. In spiritual and intellectual matters we provide frequent discussion about religion and common issues. In emotional aspect we teach them simple self help treatment like NLP, EFT, self awareness and simple counseling methods, to enhance their problems solving skills, improving interpersonal relationships, and reducing negative thinking and ineffective coping technique. In aesthetic and financial parts, we provide homemade handicraft skill or developing their cooking skills, so they can sell it to earn income. In social portion, we create social event such as helping local disaster survivors or simple gardening in the local park. With those actions, we hope that housewife has better atmosphere that empower them as human being. So, it can prevent them from minor or even major depressions.

With this community approach, hopefully we can reduce a half of major depression which affected women in this society. Foremost, women as housewives.