Warrior Mom Janna sent me a link to an article this week entitled "How To Survive Postpartum Depression". I'm not going to link to the article, but I will tell you it comes from a content farm, which as described by Mashable is a "low quality site whose main goal is to attract search traffic by piling up (mostly) useless content".
Within the article is a list of ten tips to help you get through PPD. Janna highlighted her favorites for me, which included:
"Get a nanny to take care of housework so that you can focus on yourself and the baby."
"Make sure that you always look good. Take a bath every day and put on nice clothes."
I know that the person who wrote this was just trying to be helpful. It frustrates me though, that this is the kind of stuff a mom suffering from postpartum depression might find on the internet. While getting help around the house is a good idea if you can do it, most women cannot afford a nanny. And though it's a good idea to take care of yourself the best you can, I don't think women who are suffering need to make sure they always look good. I would rather they make sure they get the help they need from a healthcare provider.
What bugs me the most is the way the article ends:
"Medications and self-help books can only help you so much. Your ability to surpass postpartum depression would largely depend on your own willingness to transcend from your present situation. Make sure to follow the tips listed above as a structure to cope with your debilitating emotions."
Gosh, if you aren't surpassing postpartum depression, maybe because the treatment you are getting isn't effective yet, does it mean you are just not willing to transcend? Yes, it's important to want to get better, but blaming the mom doesn't seem like a helpful idea.
I do find that if I wake up and get dressed every day I feel better about myself. The paragraph you linked, however, sounds entirely too much like blaming the mom for not getting better. Adding more guilt doesn't make anyone feel good about themselves, much less someone suffering from a mental health problem like PPD. I have enough mama guilt already!
So a little mascara and lipstick is going to take my depression away? Let me get on that except I'll probably stab myself in the eye and apply lipstick on my nose because I'm having a hard time seeing through these tears today…
Articles like this is why the stigma still exists, hovering over mental illness and probably will forever.
Holy Moly! Those "suggestions" make my blood boil. So many women who finally do get to see me for therapy need "reprogramming" from their own distorted beliefs of being "weak" for not "overcoming" PPD.
This author is misinformed and I am sure is trying to help. We have to believe and hope that the flood gates of feedback received in response might provide more factual information.
Mary Jackson Lee, LCSW
Wow. Just wow. Didn't Thumper's Mom say that if you don't have anything nice (or smart) to say, don't say anything at all? Maybe she had PPD as well. I hope the author of this ridiculous piece never has to live through what we all have. Those words would then come back to bite her in the bum!
It was a dude. Which probably explains a lot.
The real question is, what can we do to have this article (or ones like it) taken down? I think all of us here can agree on how harmful this article could be, but what can we do about it? Email the author? Leave comments where the article is posted? Pressure the webmaster to remove it?
Let me tell you…every day I got dressed and put make up on and was told I looked fabulous…but inside I was a terrible terrible mess.
Looks are very deceiving.
Ack. This article.
There's nothing we can do. Content farms like Associated Content, EHow, Helium, HubPages, How to Do Things.com and others put crap like this out all the time. They know postpartum depression is a popular search item so they have lots of people write uninformed things about it, and that stuff can show up in the search engines higher than the stuff from Postpartum Progress. It's infuriating. The best we can do is to link, link, link to our favorite PPD sites and promote them as much as possible. That way the good stuff will come up in searches ahead of the bad. Not enough people are doing that at this point.
Same here.
The problem is that articles like these usually don't get any response or feedback, because most people don't speak up. So for the uninformed woman out there — and let's face it, the majority of women remain uninformed about perinatal mood and anxiety disorders — she's not going to know that this article isn't correct or that better info is available.
To quote Mrs. White, played by Madeline Kahn in the movie "Clue": "Ffflame, flames. On the side of my face!" Ugh, that article makes me SO mad. As though all of us and our families who have suffered with PPD were just content to suffer? Wow.
::rage::
::more rage::
::unspeakable rage::
YIKES. This, and the many ignorant comments I see out there in response to the true and honest accounts of PPD, make me so discouraged. I can't believe we're still in this place.
The thing is, there ARE depressed people who are able to recover on their own… with time, exercise, positive thinking, and I guess a little bit o' lipstick. I'm happy for them. But that's simply not the case for many of us, and it's insulting to assume those who need more support or *gasp* medication just aren't trying hard enough.