I'm here because...

[addled dad]

my wife has battled with depression/anxiety/low self esteem etc for all of our twenty something years together. You may be wondering why on a forum such as this that it is me and not my wife who is posting. Basically she has had difficulty coming to terms with her condition and even acknowledging that there is a problem is for her an admission of failure. Her genetic profile probaly predisposes her to depression, mother, grandmother so on and so forth but numerous family problems have also contributed (her succession of stepfathers, sexual abuse and other painful stuff). She was taking Lovan (Prozac) for a couple of years until recently but has managed to gradually reduce dosage and withdraw from it. The problem is that the same sorts of problems that plagued her have come back to haunt us and things are certainly not great at the moment! I would love to see her mange her condition with a natural product such as SJW and bought her some in July at the time of her birthday (as well as "normal" presents of course) but she has only taken them erratically and has stopped altogether now. I'll probaly be making some posts to specifically see if other forum members have some insight into brands, dosage, strategies etc that may help my wife, I hope to hear from you! P.S. We live in Tasmania Australia so maybe someone from the Antipodes might have some local knowledge

[Kelly]

It's a sign of how much you love your wife that you're here for her sake... you should be really proud of that. I hope she appreciates you. During the hard times it might not feel like it, but I'm sure she does.

I also hope you can convince her to take SJW regularly... otherwise it's just not going to work that well for her. She needs to not only see the benefits and that it really is going to work (and with fewer side effects), but also how it's going to help your relationship and life in general. Has she said why she's stopped altogether? Could be a number of reasons. After 20 years you lovebirds are in it for the long haul :) and she's definitely not alone... maybe you will find other posts here that she will be interested in reading.

Best of luck,

kelly

[addled dad]

Thanks Kelly for your words of support! Yeah it's not easy after all this time, (BTW my wife is only 40 so even though we've been together for a long time we're still young at heart:smile:) Recently she started drinking way too much whilst still taking Lovan and that was really not a good situation, I managed to confront her on that one without upsetting the applecart too much but she still likes to self-medicate with alcohol which is in itself quite tricky. We have two relatively young children to parent and there are issues with our older boy (it seems like he has Asperger's) that have had a very detrimental effect on our relationship. But it's not all doom and gloom, there are still glimmers of light within the clouds. Ultimately everyone on this forum will come to the same conclusion ( I imagine) that it is up to the individual to affect change in their lives, no one can do it for you, as the partner of someone with a depressive illness you can only walk alongside them, they have to lead...