A group of investigators at the Medical Research Council, London, England, led by Shreya Dave, Ph.D., studied the incidence of parental depression in 86,957 families in the U.K. The data was taken from primary care clinic medical and pharmacy records during the period 1993-2007. Between their child’s birth and their child turning age 12 more than one-third of all mothers and about one-fifth of all fathers became depressed, with the highest rates of depression for mothers and fathers occurring within the first year of their child’s birth.
During their child’s first 12 years of life 19,286 mothers had a total of 25,176 episodes of depression and 8,012 fathers had a total of 9,683 episodes of depression. The overall rate of depression was 7.53 per 100 mothers and 2.69 per 100 fathers per year. In the first year after the child’s birth the depression rate was 13.93 per 100 mothers and 3.56 per 100 fathers.
Dr. Dave said the most likely factors for these high rates of post-partum depression shared by all parents are poor parental sleep, extra demands on parents and the negative effects of stress on spousal intimacy. Some specific factors that would apply to some but not all parents include being young parents, having an unplanned pregnancy, being low wage earners unable to afford child care, having a limited social support network, and the temporary discontinuation of mothers taking anti-depressants while pregnant and breastfeeding. Dr. Dave’s study was published in the September 6, 2010, online version of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.
Lawyers should be aware of theses findings, because they may tend to attribute all feelings of depression to their work even when those feelings are coming from raising a new child. Let’s face it, raising a new child is stressful for anyone but especially so when you have to be up early for court, completely prepared for argument, well groomed, bright-eyed and alert – instead of exhausted, bleary eyed and covered in baby vomit.
Despite our high earning potential, lawyers are living in weird economic times – a stagnant recession – when jobs are scarce for new lawyers and layoffs are plentiful for older lawyers. The financial stress of unemployment or underemployment for a lawyer can add fuel to depression associated with raising a child.
Once you realize and acknowledge that raising your child is contributing to an episode of depression for you and/or your spouse, then you are in a position to deal with it by seeing a psychologist, getting counseling, going on temporary medication and learning how to develop a stronger social support network.
It’s also a time to open your perspective to include you, your spouse and your child. Maternal or paternal depression during a child’s first years can cause permanent emotional damage to a child and raise his or her lifetime risk for depression and other psychiatric problems. Yes your career is important and yes it’s important to earn money, but your child is very important too. If you’re stuck at home due to a lousy job market, rather than spend all your time brooding and being resentful of your parental responsibilities which limit your time for job hunting, relax into parenting, enjoy it and create a beautiful bond with your child. This can ease your depression by creating meaning and pleasure during a layoff which would otherwise by somewhat tense and joyless. Yes children are burdensome (in some respects), but they are also a gift, the greatest gift I know.
In her poem When Death Comes the great American poet Mary Oliver makes the certain prospect of our death pose the question of how we will live out our lives:
When someone disturbs, annoys or otherwise ill-treats you, do you call him a “pain,” a “pain in the neck,” or a “pain in the ass?” Is there any truth to these expressions? The answer is yes according to C. Nathan DeWall, Ph.D., an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Kentucky, and Gregory Webster, Ph.D., at the University of Florida. In the July 2010 issue of Psychological Science they published their research into the connection between social rejection and physical pain. Remarkably taking the equivalent of a Tylenol for 3 weeks reduced self-reported social pain from being rejected.
Lawyers have to make a steady stream of decisions every day. These range from the small (whether to interrupt an activity to take a call) to the hugely consequential (whether to reject a final offer of settlement and go to trial). When it comes to making big decisions do you trust yourself above all others and make them alone or do you consult a colleague? If you make them alone you pay a price. What price? You may be sacrificing accuracy without the objectivity a colleague can provide, and you are certainly incurring more stress. When you make decisions alone you are completely responsible for them even though you may be missing something that a colleague might have seen.
Some people love to speak in public, while others fear it worse than death. Some people are energized by the prospect of a job interview and march in with confidence, while others fear the worst and blow it because they are self-conscious and ill-at-ease. Some people are able to take a “no” in stride and enjoy the dating process, while others make excuses to avoid asking people out and crumble when they reach out and receive a no. 
Do you consider yourself an optimist or pessimist? An optimist is someone who is hopeful and confident that things will turn out well. He has a sense of personal power and expects to obtain a favorable outcome from his efforts. An optimist does not view failure as sign that he is defective or that the universe is against him. When he meets with defeat he regards it as a temporary setback and he looks for new strategies to succeed.
It’s easier to forgive others than ourselves. The nobility and magnanimity of forgiving others is appealing. In many cases it’s possible to imagine that what led to the other’s hurtful action was not a deliberate intent to harm, but rather ignorance, naïveté or a mistake. Yet when we feel shame because we have failed at something and let others down or when we feel guilt because we have done something to hurt another, we find it very hard to let ourselves off the hook. Part of this has to do with our personal knowledge of our own standards, intentions and motivations. Letting go of shame/guilt is rare. It’s much more common for us to keep telling ourselves “I should have known better and acted better. I must be a bad person.”
People in industrialized countries are experiencing a steady decline in the quantity and quality of social relationships. In Bowling Alone Robert D. Putnam said Americans have gone from a society of joiners to one of loners. He convincingly documented this by marshaling statistics which show startling declines in the membership of political parties, labor unions, civic organizations, religious and charitable organizations, neighborhood associations, sports clubs and so forth. Contemporary social trends along these lines are reduced inter-generational living, greater social mobility, delayed marriage, dual-career families, increased single-residence households, and increased age-related disabilities. Over the last two decades there has been a three-fold increase in the number of Americans who report having no confidant.
Our homes manifest the law of entropy. The moment we get the clothes washed, dried, folded, and put away, and kids’ things picked up off the floor, everything gets messy again. A few people I know (like my wife) can’t rest until their homes are clean, neat and well organized. Many of us (me included) look at home cleaning chores somewhat resentfully, wishing they would somehow take care of themselves and leave us alone.
Difficulty falling asleep is a worldwide problem and the use of drugs to induce sleep is commonplace. In the U.S. tens of millions of people use prescription drugs to depress the central nervous system and fall asleep. The two main categories are selective GABA agonists without benzodiazepines such as Ambien, Lunesta and Sonata and benzodiazepines (anti-anxiety drugs) such as Valium, Xanax, Klonopin, Ativan, Restoril and Halcion. Benzodiazepines are also known as benzos or benzies. Both classes of drugs activate the GABA system in the posterior hypothalamus of the brain. GABA is the main inhibitory neurotransmitter in the human brain which acts to calm, relax and quiet the brain.