Types of Depression UNIQUE TO WOMEN

In addition to the major types of depression that affect men and women, women also suffer from unique types of depression due to their special physiology and hormones. Estrogen, the “female sex hormone,” affects more than 300 functions in a woman’s body including regulating menstrual cycles, protecting the heart and maintaining strong bones. The fluctuating levels of estrogen during menstrual cycles, pregnancy and menopause may impact mood and, in severe cases, trigger depressive episodes.

Unfortunately, these types of depressive episodes in women and girls often are blamed on “being moody,” “that time of the month,” or “the change” and go untreated. It is time to get beyond stereotypes that prevent women from getting medical help:

Premenstrual syndrome (PMS) can be treated or prevented — there is no reason why women need to suffer so needlessly and frequently.
More than half of the women suffering from postpartum depression will experience it again with the birth of another child. It is critical to identify this danger and treat it early.
Rates of suicide for women are highest during the perimenopausal years; these are tragically shortened lives, considering women now live a third of their lives after menopause.
Recent research shows that women’s biology differs from men’s in many more ways than previously thought and these physical differences (such as different levels of estrogen, serotonin, cortisol and melatonin) are beginning to provide clues to why women are so much more susceptible to depression as well as a special type of depression called Seasonal Affective Disorder
Stress plays a major role in depression, and it may be that women and men respond to stress differently — while women are more likely to suffer from “emotional ailments” such as depression, anxiety attacks and eating disorders, men are much more likely to act out aggressively and abuse drugs and alcohol.
Women’s fluctuating hormone levels during menstrual cycles, after childbirth, and during menopause contribute to forms of depression unique to women including Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS), Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD), Postpartum Depression, and Perimenopausal Depression. The good news is that research is helping us to understand the biological factors for depression in women and identify ways to treat and prevent it. A woman may suffer from depression at any point during her life. Like depression in men, the underlying cause of depression in women is a combination of changes in brain chemistry, stress, trauma and genetics.
The major types of treatment for depression are the same for women and men. Women who have suffered sexual traumas (such as rape and incest) may want to work with a therapist who has training and expertise in this area.

In addition, a woman’s unique biology may predispose her to unique forms of depression not found in men.

Superwoman syndrome fuels pill-pop culture

The irresponsibility of physicians and the pharmaceutical industry makes my brain explode in anger. Be aware - physicians do not pay attention and the drug industries are making billions of dollars off of our addictions. Vicodin (hydrocodone) is highly addictive and well prescribed. Matt & I have first hand knowledge of the rendering of lives that happens from this. It was interesting when we went in for Matt's leg injury the drug the doctor wanted to prescribe for pain was Percocet. Even more addictive. Being knowledgeable, he refused and stuck with the Ibuprofin - thank you very much. (Rebecca)

Popping a couple of pain pills helped Laurie J. Besden study night after night. They helped her pass the Pennsylvania bar exam. They helped her get more done in a day than many of her colleagues. Then they helped her land in jail.

Besden doesn’t seem like any drug addict you’d picture. She's smart, motivated — and an overachiever. But she’s one of an alarming number of women who have turned to prescription pills to get ahead — or even just to keep up.

Almost 6 percent of American women, that's 7.5 million adult women, report using prescription medicines for a boost of energy, a dose of calm or other non-medical reasons, according to the latest numbers from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

"Many may not consider what they're doing abuse because they're using a prescribed drug," says Susan R.B. Weiss, chief of NIDA's Science Policy Branch. "Many of these medications are being taken as performance-enhancers."

While street drug use has been declining in recent years, prescription drug abuse has been up since the 1990s.

The trend seems to be partly driven by more and more women popping pills. While men make up the majority of abusers of street drugs, including meth, cocaine and heroin, women are just as likely to abuse prescription pills as men.

Studies show that women are more likely — in some cases, 55 percent more likely — to be prescribed an abusable prescription drug, especially narcotics and anti-anxiety drugs.

"Not surprisingly, availability increases abuse patterns," Weiss says.

This alarms some drug abuse experts because women also seem to be more vulnerable to addiction to these types of drugs once they start taking them.

Perfection through pharmaceuticals?
To blame may be what some are calling the superwoman syndrome. Overworked, overwhelmed and overscheduled women juggling families, friends and careers are turning to stimulants, painkillers and anti-anxiety meds to help launch them through endless to-do lists.

"Women load their lives with so much that they get in over their heads, and some turn to prescription pills to cope," says Talia Witkowski, a psychologist in Los Angeles.

Witkowski, 30, began abusing her prescription attention deficit hyperactivity disorder drugs in high school, and has been clean for three years.

"For many women, even those whom you would never suspect, pills offer an escape," she says. But what many women don't realize is that they are conducting a dangerous experiment on their health and their mind.

Start of a secret addiction
After graduating from the Dickinson School of Law at Pennsylvania State University in 1999, Laurie Besden felt overwhelmed by the pressure to pass the bar. So she stole a box of Vicoprofen, which contains the narcotic painkiller hydrocodone, from her ex-boyfriend's father's house and popped two pills. She had heard the medication could offer a burst of energy and ability to focus.

"I had energy to study for 12 hours and then clean the house like a superwoman," recalls the 35-year-old from Plymouth Meeting, Pa. Eventually, her two-a-day habit grew to 20 a day.

After she passed the bar, she tried to quit, but couldn't. "If I didn't take them, I was going to be sick," she says. "I needed the pills to get out of bed so my heart wouldn't go into palpitations."

Then she started a prestigious — and demanding — clerkship, and realized she was completely dependent on her secret stash of pills to get through the day.

For years, she hid this addiction from her friends and family. She no longer even tried to imagine life without her little helpers. Then her source — a doctor who prescribed these pills for any phony condition — had his medical license revoked. Besden figured out how to call in her own prescriptions, using false names and impersonating doctors.

In 2002, she was arrested for the first of what would be five times before she was convicted in 2004 for prescription fraud and jailed for almost a year.

Pills all around
Abuse of prescription drugs has risen right along with increases in the number of prescriptions for stimulants and painkillers seen since the early '90s, experts note. According to IMS Health, a research firm that tracks prescription use, the use of stimulants has nearly tripled over the past decade.

And as the drugs have become more commonplace, our attitude has become increasingly cavalier. After all, if a kid can be given an amphetamine for ADHD, couldn't Mom benefit from a little extra focus, too?

Women aren't just abusing their own prescriptions; they're also dipping into friends' supplies. In one survey, 29 percent of U.S. women admitted to sharing or borrowing somebody else's prescription drugs in their lifetime. This study, published in the Journal of Women's Health, found the rate of borrowing was highest among women ages 18 to 44. That stat is backed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which found that the main source of prescription drugs among non-medical users — a whopping 56 percent — was free drugs from friends and family.

The most commonly abused pills are opiod painkillers, stimulants and central nervous depressants, generally used to treat anxiety and sleep disorders. But these drugs are used for specific brain chemical imbalances, and if you are healthy, you risk tweaking your brain's natural abilities to sleep, focus and calm down.

These pills can also undermine your confidence if you begin relying on a pill versus your own strengths and capabilities to get through the day, Weiss says.

Popping too many pills also can trigger an irregular heartbeat and lead to cardiac arrest — and even death. In fact, there's been an exponential rise in the number of unintentional drug poisoning deaths, which spiked nationwide by more than 68 percent between 1999 and 2004, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Accidental overdose often happens when users build up tolerance to the drugs and must take more and more for the same effect.

Another big worry is that these pills can interact with many other common medications. When combined with over-the-counter cold medicine, for instance, stimulants can drive up blood pressure to dangerously high levels.

But the potential for addiction is the most serious consequence, experts warn.

At age 15, Witkowski, the Los Angeles psychologist, started abusing medications including the Ritalin she'd been prescribed. Once she got into college, she began experimenting with other drugs. "I knew I was living a lie, but I couldn't stop," she says. Finally she got help from a treatment program called Heal Your Hunger.

As Witkowski learned, addicts can recover, especially under the guidance of a therapist or program that specializes in addiction.

"An addiction specialist will be able to offer a solid assessment on how much control the addict has lost and what treatment plan is best," says Dr. Ken Thompson, medical director of Caron, an alcohol and drug addiction treatment center headquartered in Wernersville, Pa. He advises women pursue gender-specific treatment.

"Women often have different motivations than men in abusing prescription drugs, and by being in a women's-specific program, they're able to deal with those reasons more effectively," he says.

"This doesn't mean they're always going to suffer or be miserable, but they will have to pay attention to their recovery and do things to support staying clean," Thompson says. At Caron, for instance, addicted women who are in the process of healing are encouraged to eat healthy, exercise, relax and do mind-body activities like yoga.

Dr. Harold C. Urschel III, co-founder of Enterhealth, an addiction recovery program in Dallas, says these are the same strategies he recommends all women follow, especially if they're turning to a pill to relieve stress or anxiety, even just once. "You're cheating yourself when you use a pill," he says.

That's a message Besden has come to accept, especially in jail, which she says saved her life. "I was forced to get clean, something I didn't think would happen until I died," she says. After jail, she sought treatment at Caron where she learned how to live without drugs. Since then she's been rebuilding her life.

Clean now for six years, Besden's had her license to practice law in Pennsylvania reinstated. She's a working attorney in civil law who finds satisfaction in every day activities — like swimming, hanging out with her dog Marcus and helping other lawyers recover from addiction.

Yet she's also an addict in recovery, attending five support meetings weekly and touching base with her sponsor, and hopes she can inspire other women who have a secret addiction to get help. "Getting clean was the hardest thing I've ever done," she says, "but getting clean and maintaining my sobriety is by far the biggest accomplishment of my life."

Karen Asp, a freelance journalist who specializes in fitness, health and nutrition, is a contributing editor for Woman's Day and writes regularly for Self, Prevention, Real Simple, Women's Health, Shape and Men's Fitness.

The Cougar/Menopause Connection

This is not my post - go to

http://the-cougarz-den.blogspot.com

Sunday, February 1, 2009

In her book, Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, Christiane Northrup, M.D. states the following about menopause: "No other stage of a woman's life has as much potential for understanding and tapping into women's power as this one -- if, that is, a woman is able to negotiate her way through the general cultural negativity that has surrounded menopause for centuries."

There is much to consider here as to the connection between the mind/body/emotional well-being of a menopausal woman and society's ferocious label of women as cougars.
For one thing, many women may not even realize the totality of what is going on within this trifecta of the self (mind/body/emotional well-being). They might think that menopausal symptoms are limited to hot flashes, diminishing bone density, weight gain, and bitchiness. As a result, they aren't able to communicate to their partners the sum of what is truly going on.
Factor in that, generally speaking,the communication gap between the sexes remains a Grand Canyonesque chasm and that a vast majority of men and women equate menopause with old, and it is easy to see how misunderstandings and preconceptions prevail. Plus, let's not forget the ways in which we are conditioned by the media and by human weakness to focus on and be consumed by the negative. But that's a topic to growl about another day. For now let's focus on positivity and understanding the connection between menopause and cougardom.

There is much more going on during the perimenopausal/menopausal phase than the myriad of symptoms mentioned above. To paraphrase Dr. Northrop, this is the time when a woman focuses on recreating her life to accomodate the values and dreams that she put on hold during the nurturing years. During menopause, a woman "is more apt to tell the truth than ever before . . . and less apt to make excuses for others. Many women quest for peace of mind against a background of turmoil and change . . .and explore new facets of their identity." We begin to answer the creative call within ourselves in any number of ways: we change jobs or begin a new career, go back to school, write (!), take voice, dance, or acting lessons, learn crafts and make jewelry, pottery, afghans, quilts, etc., actively speak out for social justice, run for office - you get the picture. This newfound freedom to take care of ourselves and our needs often leads to self-acceptance and a shedding of inhibitions, thereby freeing us to explore and experience new heights of both our sexuality and our creative expressions. Dr. Joan Borysenko calls these years a "midlife metamorphosis."

These years are not a preclude to the winter of a woman's life, but rather, a second spring to the latter half of her lifespan. This is something to celebrate, not to fear. Men struggling in relationships with menopausal women may want to shift their perspectives and view this stage of women's lives as a positive thing. It is when we, as women, come into our personal power (at least, the baby boomer women of my generation do. Younger generations of women may or may not be as strongly attached to the stigma of the male/female voice and the gender roles that dominated the 20th century).

We finally know who we are, what's truly important for our well-being, and how we can find balance in serving ourselves while we continue to serve others. Consequently, women feel rejuvinated and excited about their futures. If their partners don't go with the flow (ironic timing for that phrase, isn't it?), their relationships will often be in danger. The cougar's prowess to achieve self-fulfillment is now maximally heightened and she will abandon her den if she must. But usually, this will occur only when her mate does not appreciate or understand that she would rather venture into newfound freedoms of expression without abandoning her den so that she and her mate can venture on this journey together. If her mate is unwilling to accept this empowered female, she will seek acceptance elsewhere.

This may be where the most common label of cougar was born, for many men over 50 are not used to the idea of women being so outspoken, aggressive, self-assured, and independant. Younger men are because gender roles have been substantially modified in the past few decades. Thus, it has become more common for women to seek the company of and partnerships with younger men. It doesn't have to be this way.

The key is for a man in mid-life to recognize that, in a way, his mate is a whole new woman - she is renewed in that she is finally whole - and their relationship can begin anew as well, on a new footing with a stronger foundation, and deeper, more exciting experiences together - in and out of the boudoir. And for those of you men who spot single women in their forties and fifties out there 'on the prowl', don't assume that we are merely looking to hook up with young studs. Many of us are attractive, strong, self-assured, stable women who are just out with the girls, or out seeking mates who are courageous enough to journey with us through our second spring and beyond.

FOTF Women & Mid-Life Crisis

This is a radio broadcast from Focus on the Family. This was a fascinating and informative broadcast, for both men & women. This is part 5 of a 6 part series. Very quick, 5 minute segments. I will try & publish the rest but if you want the link to the broadcast (and numerous others on ALL topics of life) let me know.

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John Fuller (JF) & James Dobson (JD) interview Jim Conway (JC) and his wife Sally Conway (SC). They are experts on the middle years and they are discussing ways to help women manage that mid life crisis.

"There’s a common understanding that men go through a mid life crisis sometime in mid 30’s early 40’s. But women also go through a mid life crisis."

JD: Let’s get specific – how do you head off a mid-life crisis?

JC: If we can get husbands first of all to realize his wife, as well as he a little later on, are both going to go through a transition where they are going to be rethinking who they are, what they want to do with their life and what their values will be. It’s not a bad thing, it’s not an unspiritual thing but it’s a normal rethinking process. He needs to be prepared to have time enough to allow that to happen in her life so that he is not just using her to make his career successful. See that is what I was doing with Sally, I was using her to keep my church ministry going - now don’t demand any time of your own because you’ll take that away from my ministry.

JD: I think one of the most difficult realities that a young man has to face is that he is brought up to see his career as an all consuming effort and he marries this helpmate, who is going to stand side by side with him and together, they will conquer the world. He buys in to that and he sets himself to go out to do it, pours himself in to it and he thinks in his little mind “I’m doing this for her – this is for you babe! Together, we’re gonna buy a house because I’m working hard and we’re going to raise our kids – because I’m working hard – and I’m going to provide for you” – and he thinks of that as his mission. Then it dawns on him she not only doesn’t appreciate that, she considers his job a competitor. She resents that work - instead of feeling like “well I appreciate what you're doing for us” – she sees the job as another woman, practically and that’s a blow to him when that comes.

JC: And if the man is reflective enough, he’ll see that he wasn’t doing it for her at all. He was doing it for himself. And he never faced that. That’s devastating. She’s faced it – “you're out doing that for you, it’s not for me”.

SC: Well a lot of time she’d be more willing to trade some of those things he’s providing, for time that she’d like to have from him.

JD: I’ve watched medical students go in to their post graduate education with great zeal – this is something we’re going to do together!” but by the junior year, the third year of school, the wife realizes “hey, I’ve been replaced. This guys’ married to medicine. This isn’t something we’re doing together, this is something he’s doing for himself. And furthermore, I’m a has been”. And divorces occur right there.

SC: And it happens to the seminary students we work with too. They realize their husband likes Hebrew & Greek and Theology more then he does with a relationship with them. Or he feels like he must put it first in order to get A’s at school.

JD: I hate to really bomb the men because I didn’t get the PHD without some sweat and you’ve got to work hard to make it in life. So what’s the answer? How do men take this challenge that they feel God has called them to, whether it’s the ministry or something else, without sacrificing what their wives need?

SC: It would be better if a seminary student took B’s and had one of his majors in personal relationships. Especially with his wife. Even if it took longer to finish school.

JD: I had to do that. There was a point in my doctorate program in USC that I felt the obligations in classwork had eroded my relationship with Shirley. We came to a point where I didn’t know her as well as I wanted to and I knew she needed me. I took a semester off in order to make contact with her again and cooled down my outside responsibilities because I wanted my family to be higher on my list of priorities. So we can do both.

JC: I think we need to point out to men that quite often the younger men is not focused on his direction. When he gets into his mid 40’s he’s going to throw a lot of junk away because he’s going to say “that’s a dumb thing, I wish I’d never started that”. If we can get them to focus in their mid 20’s then their not going to take on every job. i.e. working on doctoral program. If a professor says “I need someone to take on this project”, quite often a doctoral student will accept that project because politically it is an advantage for him. It may not be his interest, it may not be where he want to spend his time but he does it for a political end. If we can get people to focus away from their political ends and focus on their gifts & abilities and narrow, then they can take lesser amount of energy to accomplish without taking on the world.

SC: Some other things to help the woman get through it quicker – besides her husband being the right kind of guy. She too needs to look at her own gifts and abilities are. Yes, if she’s a mother right now & the children are still home, she’s got her priorities right in front of her. She too may have taken on an awful lot she doesn’t need, such as PTA, teaching or several things at church, to where she’s a fragmented person too. And she may be ready to throw it all over. Or she could be the other way to where she’s grown stale and doesn’t have any outside interests, kind of sogging away in front of the soaps every day. In any case, she needs to be evaluating what God intends for her to do with her time & abilities.

JD: Just as a husband has a responsibility to reserve some time effort & energy for his wife, no woman should depend on any man, including her husband, to meet her emotional needs. That was another very important milestone in my relationship with Shirley. No matter how loving I was, how attentive I was, how involved I was with the children, I was gone throughout the day and she needed more than that. And it was when she started to develop a ministry in the community, a whole network of friends and her conversation was not totally with me but with a lot of other people, then her world began to to open up. It’s a dual thing, staying alive emotionally.

SC: That’s right! Another thing you can be doing to help this time go smoother, is getting some guidance in helping her relationship with her children. They may be going through a traumatic time as teenagers, having their own identity & independence problems. If she can be understanding what they are going through so the relationship with them goes as smooth as possible, it will be helping her own time.