Shortly after her youngest daughter was born, in 2000, Mary experienced her first serious depression. “I was living in Ireland and was having all these really repetitive negative thoughts,” she recalled. “I just felt like I should disappear. That I was useless.” After going on Prozac, Mary (names have been changed) recovered, but over the years she found herself vulnerable to periods of dark thought.
Analytical by nature, Mary read up on depression and made an effort to talk about it with her daughters, Ellen, now 15, and Laura, 14. Though Laura had a sunny disposition, Mary fretted about Ellen, who was sensitive and moody. “She’s always been a worrier,” Mary recalled. “Even when she was tiny, buckled up in her car seat, she’d ask, ‘Do you have your keys? Do we have enough gas?’”
[For more of this story, written by Jennifer Kahn, go to http://www.psmag.com/health-an...arkness-in-the-world]
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