Brooke Shields: Battles Against Depression
Posted by Depressed - 22/11/11 at 03:11 pmBrooke Shields—complete name Brooke Christa Shields—has mesmerized the world with the magnificence of her face for several years. Aged 38, she has been considered to have everything one could ever wish for: an ageless beauty, a noteworthy career, grand fame and fortune, a happy marriage and a beautiful baby girl. Many of us, however, do not know of her agonizing years of struggle against depression after giving birth. “I began feeling uncomfortable, as if I would never again be accepted as part of this world. After having worked my whole life, here I was without a job. Walking to my car, I began to cry,” Brooke Shields said in an interview.
She suffered from what medical specialists call post-partum depression, a clinical depression experienced by women who have just given birth. She and husband Chris Henchy, have a trouble having a child. Consequently, they underwent various kinds of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Unfortunately, her first pregnancy led into a miscarriage three months into conception.
In an Oprah Winfrey interview, she says, “I had to mourn it but I also didn’t want to waste any time. I thought ‘God if it happened once, it can happen again.”
Fortunately, she became pregnant again and bore a pretty, healthy baby girl named Rowan Francis. However, instead of celebrating to her heart’s deepest content, Shields felt empty and wanted to end her life.
“I couldn’t hold her and I couldn’t sing to her and I couldn’t smile at her. All I wanted to do was [to] disappear and die,” she says during the time of her worst state of mind.
Her gynecologist eventually prescribed her an antidepressant, Paxil, after talking her into having a post-partum depression. But Shields claims she felt no instant health benefit and so she stopped taking the medicine.
She later behaved peculiarly and attempted suicide.
“The depression plus the effect of going off the drug led her to believe that she should not exist because her baby was better off without her and life was never going to better. She almost killed herself by crashing her car into a wall on the side of the freeway. She only stopped herself because Rowan was with her that moment,” as shared by her physician.
“My baby was in the backseat and that even pissed me off. I thought, ‘she’s even ruining this for me,’” she says.
She later went back to her gynecologist and was explained that her sudden drug withdrawal without doctor’s permission caused her degenerating mental health. Hence, she went through a weekly psychotherapy and was back on the antidepressant Paxil.
After some time, she eventually got better. Despite the tumultuous struggles she encountered, Shields is now showing all the signs of settling into motherhood. Shields and Henchy even had a second baby.
“I learned what was going on inside my body and my brain and I learned I wasn’t doing anything wrong to feel that way—that it was out of my control,” she recalls about her post-partum depression moments.
Medical professionals say that post-partum depression can last for more than a year if it’s not treated, but early diagnosis and treatment usually results in faster recovery. As was Shield’s case, psychotherapy, antidepressants like Paxil and sometimes placebos are usually prescribed by doctors to patients suffering from this. However, recently, a research study was released saying that other antidepressants like Zoloft is ineffective compared to placebos.
References:
- ·celebitchy.com/80793/brooke_shields_on_post-partum_depression_i_was_suicidal/
- ·psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/05/15/brooke-shields-on-postpartum-depression/
- ·webmd.com/depression/postpartum-depression/features/brooke-shields-depression-struggle?page=4
- ·dailyrecord.co.uk/showbiz/celebrity-news/2009/11/18/brooke-shields-postnatal-depression-drove-me-to-verge-of-suicide-86908-21831052/
- ·emedicinehealth.com/postpartum_depression/article_em.htm
