Then and Now

Mrs. Grama, whose sensible view I've quoted before here, wrote another sensible piece in Inyan magazine that began with her relating three incidents.

In the first incident, a father takes his three year old to the Steipler Gaon and says, "He still doesn't talk."

The Steipler asked him, "Can he say at least one word?"

The father said yes, he says Abba.

The Steipler said, then don't worry, with Hashem's help he will talk.

In the second incident, a young father asked Rabbi Nissim Karelitz what to do about his four and six year olds who constantly fought.

R' Karelitz said, Tell them stories [that emphasize good middos]."

Third incident - an 11 year old boy's principal asked the mother to come down to the school where he told her that her son was brazenly breaking the rules and was having trouble concentrating in class.

The mother consulted with an experienced and successful mother of a large family who knew her and her son well and was told she must do a better job protecting her son from being bullied by his older brother, a child needs to feel safe in his own home, and told her how.

Mrs. Grama says the three stories ended well. She points out that nowadays, with these situations, most people would have consulted with a speech pathologist, a behavioral psychologist and a psychiatrist who would likely have:

asked the parents why they hadn't started intervention earlier and advised immediate speech therapy

discussed sibling rivalry and appropriate parental intervention followed by behavioral therapy

prescribed medication to calm the child followed by therapy.

She asks, are we made differently nowadays? Or is it our way of thinking that has become corrupted?

The Wrong Address

I have been reading a diary that is printed weekly in Ami Living. A mother tells about her wonderful son who did beautifully in school through high school. Then he inexplicably began acting strangely. She says it is ten years now that she has been experiencing horrible situations with her son, his drug use, stealing, suicide attempts, outbursts, lack of religiosity.  For a while it was a mystery, until her son confided in her husband that he had watched inappropriate things (no further details about this). This is a letter that I wrote to the magazine which they have not published:

I have been following the tragic story of a woman's son's deterioration over the past many installments of Up the Down Escalator and I am perplexed.  What set the young man off was seeing inappropriate things. This led to consultations with psychologists, a social worker, and even medication and hospitalization.

But seeing inappropriate things is a spiritual problem! Out in the 'velt," seeing such things is not viewed as a problem! It would seem that the right person to consult about this would have been a rabbinic guide who could have provided a Torah perspective, direction in teshuva, and guidance in how to get back on track, spiritually.  

Wishing all of us yeshuos,

To me, it sounds like asking for a loaf of bread in a hardware store, shoes in a grocery story.  They may as well consult with a podiatrist; why a psychologist? These professionals were of no use and worse, the young man deteriorated under their care. It is painful to read how misdirected he was. They focused exclusively on his depression and other psychological symptoms and not on what got him in the mess in the first place.

Unique Therapy

 

The following remarkable story was posted by Dr. Meir Wikler on matzav.com:

 

Every morning, in birchos hashachar, we thank Hashem for “preparing the footsteps of man” – hameichin mitzadei gaver. Every encounter we have throughout the day is preordained, and has a specific purpose and lesson. Often, we are oblivious to the Divine Plan and chalk these meetings up to simple happenstance.

Recently, however, I met someone who even I could see was dispatched from Above. In order to fully comprehend the import of our conversation, a bit of background information is necessary.

Approximately ten years ago, a well-respected mechanech who I had heard of but barely knew approached me in shul one day after davening.

 

“Dr. Wikler, may I speak with you in confidence?” he asked in an undertone.

 

“Of course,” I replied, feeling a bit flattered that someone of his stature would trust me with a personal matter.

 

He informed me that his wife had been suffering from chronic, debilitating depression for many years. They had tried psychotherapy, psychotropic medications, and even shock therapy – all to no avail. His wife was literally unable to function as a wife and mother, and he was at his wits’ end, searching for the tiniest ray of hope. Perhaps, he wondered, I might know of some alternative therapy that they had not yet tried.

 

Unfortunately, I was unable to suggest anything. All I could do was empathize with the man’s plight and wish his wife a refuah sheleimah. My feeling of helplessness lingered long after the conclusion of our brief exchange.

 

Recently, I learned about the impressive results of a new treatment for chronic depression called “TMS.” The next time I happened to see that mechanech, I was eager to approach him and inquire about his wife’s health, because now I did have a suggestion to offer.

 

“Shalom aleichem,” I began. “How is your wife feeling these days?”

 

“Oh, thank you for asking,” he replied, sincerely appreciative that I had remembered his predicament. “Baruch Hashem, she is doing much better now. In fact, for the past two years she has been more of a mother and a wife than ever before.”

 

I was delighted to hear the good news. “That’s wonderful,” I said. “Please tell me what miraculous treatment you found.”

 

“You want to know the truth?” he whispered, leaning in closer to me to ensure that the conversation would not be overheard. “I was the therapy.”

 

Now my curiosity was really piqued. “What do you mean?”

 

He then went on to explain that since his marriage, he had not been a very good husband. He had been overbearing, short-tempered, and critical, and had routinely demeaned his wife. As he put it, “It was my way or the highway. I was the boss, and she had to do everything my way.”

 

Approximately two years ago, this mechanech did some serious soul searching, which, combined with a few heart-to-heart consultations with his personal rebbi, produced a dramatic turnaround. “A paradigm shift,” as he put it to me.

 

His behavioral changes had a gradual but profoundly positive impact on his wife’s chronic depression. She began to steadily improve in her functioning as both a wife and a mother. For instance, before the turnaround two years ago, she was resentful and even disparaging of her husband’s public shiurim. “Again you’re speaking?” she would ask disdainfully.

 

Last week, the husband was invited to deliver a shiur on Shabbos afternoon. His wife volunteered to accompany him on his walk to the shiur. And when he came home, she proudly and enthusiastically inquired how it went, how many men showed up, etc.

 

My clients would be legitimately horrified at the thought that I might publicize any private matter they shared with me in confidence, even if I didn’t use their name. To assuage their concerns, therefore, I will close with the final words this man shared with me before we parted.

 

“As you can imagine, it was not easy for me to acknowledge that I was the cause of my wife’s depression all of these years. And, quite honestly, I was uncomfortable sharing this with you. I did so, however, because I hope that someday you’ll write up my story and publish it. You see, I may not be the only husband who is mistreating his wife and causing her to be depressed. And if even one other person will learn from my example, it will go a long way toward mitigating some of the damage I caused.”

 

I left that brief encounter with deep admiration and respect for this courageous mechanech. It takes tremendous honesty and incredible strength of character to take charge of one’s middos the way he did. I was also left with a heightened awareness of the Hashgachah pratis involved in such “chance” encounters, and with a firm resolve to fulfill the man’s wish that I publicize his story.

 

Which I just did.

{Matzav.com}

Confessions by Those in the Field of Mental Health

Psychotherapist, Shimon Russell, in an interview with Ami magazine said, "My first ten years out of college, I tried to do everything they taught me.  The next ten years, I tried to forget everything I'd been taught, to see if I could figure out what actually works.  My third decade of practice has been completely devoted to integrating all of it, both psychologically and spiritually."

In a Hamodia article, Rabbi Dr Abraham Twersky says, "When I was in my second year of medical school, my professor asked me what I was going for.  I told him psychiatry and he said, 'That's good.  Go to all the lectures, listen to what they say, ace your board exams, and then forget it all and use your head."

Is there any other field of medicine (or any other field) in which a student would find it beneficial to forget what was taught and figure things out for themselves? What does this tell us about the field of mental health, treatment and therapy?

I wonder why they think it's a good idea to share how useless their education was, other than providing them with official credentials which is not of any help to their clients. 

Warding Off Disaster

It's no wonder that we read of the high use of anxiety medication in the US and particularly among the frum population.  I say the following without having done any actual research on this; this is just the sense that I have about changing times.

Although there were always sad stories and troubling world events, the frequency of tragedies and how close to home they reach, seems unprecedented in the past 50 years.  For example, when I was a young adult, I probably heard of Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) but that's as far as it went.  At this point, I've been menachem avel someone's whose brother died of it, the rebbetzin of my former shul is suffering from it, my friend's father died of it, and I have heard and read of several more in the frum world.

Another example, up until ten years ago, I don't think I heard of any child (not talking about an infant) dying in their sleep.  Now I can think of three.

The feeling that something can drastically change for the bad, out of the blue, is reasonable since it has been happening with seemingly greater frequency and to people we know or to people close to those we know.  The Twin Towers coming down, the Har Nof shul massacre, the frequent ads from Chai Lifeline and RCCS reinforce the possibility of a disaster about to happen.

What to do about it? One idea - Rabbi David Ashear is quite popular now.  He does a 4 minute daily emuna message which can be heard on the phone: (605) 475-4799 access code 840886# or received by email: Emunadaily@gmail.com

Fake Medicine

Some tidbits from an article in The Atlantic called "The Real Problems With Psychiatry":

* Every doctor who knows anything, knows that there is no biochemical imbalance that causes depression.

* Our gut reaction is always "that was really sick. Those guys in Boston -- they were really sick." But how do we know? Unless you decide in advance that anybody who does anything heinous is sick. This society is very wary of using the term "evil."

* A depression diagnosis gives people an identity formed around having a disease that we know doesn't exist, and how that can divert resources from where they might be needed. Imagine how much less depression there would be if people weren't worried about tuition, health care, and retirement.

* The DSM is created by a group of committees. It's a bureaucratic process. In place of scientific findings, the DSM uses expert consensus to determine what mental disorders exist and how you can recognize them.

* You can't just ask for special services for a student who is awkward. You have to get special services for a student with autism. In court, mental illnesses come from the DSM. If you want insurance to pay for your therapy, you have to be diagnosed with a mental illness.

the article

Find Someone Capable and Pay!

I was listening to lecture #300 of R' Avigdor Miller's famous Thursday night classes in the course of which he denounced psychiatrists and psychologists.  In the question and answer session, someone asked who to turn to when that sort of help is needed and his answer was, go to someone capable.  He went on to say that in his experience, shlimazals become the psychiatrists and psychologists.  They are people with the same problems they purport to address.

He said people are foolish when they pay a lot of money for professional sessions but don't offer a single dollar to someone capable who is willing to give of his time when he is not a professional.  He said it's not so easy to find proper counselors but stay away from those with diplomas!

Well, R' Miller was not known for mincing words.  His bluntness was quite refreshing though sometimes hard to hear.  This lecture was probably said back in the 70's.  Would he feel any differently today? I don't know.  It's possible he responded to a similar question much later on on a tape I did not hear.

His main point is well taken - go to someone capable! Why does such an obvious thing need to be stated? Because many people think that a diploma means you're capable.  Counselors can be incompetent and give bad advice.  A degree does not confer wisdom on anyone.  Furthermore, a degree means the professional had to master material that goes contrary to Torah ideas. 

Are there capable, frum professionals today? Yes, I believe so.  Nevertheless, I think it's good to be reminded that competence is the key.

Medical Treatment that Kills

Rabbi Moshe Sherer a'h, was chairman of Agudath Israel of America.  There is a 600+ page biography about him out of which I read a few hundred pages.  He was a dynamic, driven person who could have made millions if he ran a company but devoted himself to the welfare of Klal Yisrael. 

How shocked I was to read that he contracted acute leukemia as a result of the chemotherapy he had taken for lymphoma (which happens in 8% of cases)! That medication is accompanied by unpleasant side effects, is one thing; that the medication causes a virulent disease when being applied to cure a virulent disease, is outrageous.  Similar to one of the side effects of antidepressants being suicidal thoughts.  May Hashem spare us such cures and keep us well.

Sybil Exposed

I did not read Sybil but I am reading Sybil Exposed.  Sybil was a book published in 1973 that went on to become a bestseller and a movie.  It was presented as the true story of a woman treated for multiple personality disorder who had been so horribly abused by her mother that she became a psychiatric case.  The book described grotesque rated R scenes that had the public enthralled.  Not surprisingly, huge numbers of people were diagnosed as having a multiple personality disorder after the book became a hit (like anorexia became a "fad diagnosis" in Hong Kong after it was marketed there, see my post "Crazy Like Us"  click here to read post

The lives of three women are intertwined: the patient, her doctor, and the author of Sybil.  The author of Sybil Exposed shows how the patient's illness wasn't an illness, how her treatment was a sham, and how the fictional story Sybil came to be written and presented as the truth. 

As much as the book is an expose of the book Sybil, it is an expose of the quackery of the psychiatric profession.  As anybody who has read previous posts (labels: psychiatry and mental illness) on this blog have seen, I am not impressed by the pseudo-medical specialty of psychiatry.  The so-called treatments given by the doctor in this case as well as her colleagues back in the 50's till the present day, are a horror.  Forget about "first do no harm."  That is far from their guiding principle.  When will the public finally figure out that the emperor has no clothes? That the psychiatric/mental health profession in cahoots with the drug companies are making us into a nation of drugged, incompetent, invalids?

Positive Psychology - An Oxymoron?

Two days ago there was a news item which said: Medication to treat mental health disorders is soaring among U.S. adults.  20% of all adults said they took at least one medication to treat a mental disorder. Among women, 25% said they took such medication and 20% said they were using an antidepressant.

The number of children under 10 taking antipsychotic medication, which is reserved for the most severe mental illnesses, doubled from 2001 to 2010.

In short, we are either getting crazier and sadder or the psychiatric and pharmaceutical companies are doing a great job convincing us that we are. 

The crying shame is that the voice of psychologists like Dr. Martin Seligman, the father of “positive psychology” who was called “the Freud of the 21^st century” by Newsweek, is drowned out by the doom peddlers.  Seligman shocked the world of psychology by focusing on what makes people mentally healthy instead of what makes them mentally ill.

Forbes had an article last week about the upcoming DSM V with an intro that said, "The new manual of mental disorders coins bizarre new psychological disorders, lowers the threshold for diagnosing old ones, and has some critics pulling their hair out."

We are a generation that wants to be victims, that wants to be able to blame our parents, our environment, our genes, our so-called chemical imbalance, anything but ourselves, for our problems.  If you as much as suggest that someone who has truly suffered at the hands of evil people can move past that and have a good life, you are vilified and accused of not understanding the depths of the person's trauma. 

In their sincerity to help molestation victims, they push those hapless individuals down and seek to keep them down.  I suspect it's because they believe that if the person goes on to lead a happy life, it demonstrates that what happened to them was not that egregious.  That's like saying that a Holocaust victim who was stripped of his dignity, who was robbed and beaten, who was a hairsbreadth away from death thousands of times and who lost his parents, spouse, children, extended family and community, could not go on to marry and live a good life.  But thousands did! And they are heroes of the spirit, particularly if they retained their faith and raised religious, upstanding children. 

"Positive Psychology" may seem like an oxymoron but it doesn't have to be.

This is ADHD?!

 

A woman in an article on aish.com describes her 5 year old as violent and aggressive.  He bites, throws things, chokes her, and he does this with a smile or a kiss.  Not surprisingly in today's world of psychiatry, the child is medicated for ADHD.  Mind you, these are NOT symptoms of ADHD but who cares? If you can control him with mind-altering drugs, why not? After all, the alternative would be to actually see what on earth is motivating a 5 year old to act like a vilde chaya.  Was he abandoned in childcare since babyhood? Is there no discipline at home? There is not a single mention of how the parents respond to his terrible behavior! Only how she tried dietary methods and then moved on to drugs.  She says she is waiting for him "to grow up, and to grow into an understanding of greater self-regulation." Heaven help us ...

Dr. John Rosemond the parenting expert would laugh at her description and her medical solution.  He would say make a list of the objectionable behaviors: throwing things, biting, deliberately breaking anything, hurting anyone, and tell her son that the doctor said that this behavior indicates he is not getting enough sleep and that he should be put to bed right after supper, but no later than 6:30 p.m., until these behaviors cease completely for three weeks. If, during the three weeks, the child did a single one of these behaviors, the three weeks have to start over the next day.  In one case, said Rosemond, it took six weeks, during which time the three-week cure started over seven times, mostly in weeks one and two.  Rosemond is a no-nonsense kind of guy, as you can see. He believes in setting down the rules and enforcing them like parents used to do once upon a time.

I would add to Rosemond's "prescription" because his approach only addresses the behaviors with the goal of eliminating them. I would recommend that the parents figure out (perhaps with the help of an outsider) why their child is acting in this way. What message is he trying to convey? How can his needs be satisfied without his having to resort to ugly behavior?

But medicating him? Seems reprehensible to me.

Unhinged: The Trouble With Psychiatry - A Doctor's Revelations about a Profession in Crisis

I read a fascinating book about psychiatry written by a practicing psychiatrist who, as the book flap says, exposes deeply disturbing problems plaguing his profession.  He writes about how psychiatry is mostly about prescribing drugs these days, with all the troubling consequences that entails, and has largely forsaken talk therapy.  This is because they will earn far less doing therapy than by prescribing drugs.  He says if he did therapy, he could see one patient an hour and he would earn about $70/hour.  He typically saw three patients an hour, for years, and he made $180 an hour (factor in expenses and he made closer to $130 an hour).

He writes about how they treat symptoms after determining that the patient exhibits an arbitrary number of signs that match a supposed disorder.  They spend fifteen minutes on a patient and don't bother finding out about the patient's life.  He shows how DSM diagnoses are not particulary scientific, and tells us that the number of possible diagnoses has increased from 182 to 263.  Unbelievably, a committee votes on deleting what is considered old-fashioned disorders and voting in newfangled disorders.

What he says backs up many things I have believed about the profession but I am no authority; he is! So when I read that a practicing psychiatrist says there is no proof to the chemical imbalance theory of depression, I say wow! I have read numerous articles over the years in frum and not Jewish media that speak about a chemical imbalance with the same confidence we reserve for the sun rising in the morning!

He says the scientific literature contains thousands of papers proposing neurobiological theories to explain PTSD, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders but these theories remain unproven! He says, "the shocking truth is that psychiatry has yet to develop a convincing explanation for the pathophysiology of any illness at all."

Even as I was amazed by the honesty of the author in showing the major flaws of his profession, I was shocked that he still goes through the motions.  How pathetic to drug someone when their problem is clearly loneliness or unhappiness with their job.  As a colleague of his put it, "Most of the people I see have misery and unhappiness rather than major depression.  They are miserable because of problems in relationships or difficulties coping with their life's circumstances."  She doesn't drug them.  She makes half of what a full-time psychiatrist in private practice makes because she does talk therapy instead.

There is a chapter on how drug companies market their drugs to psychiatrists.  Oh boy ... it's so crooked that the author, who started out innocently working as a paid drug endorser for one of these drug companies, stopped working for them despite the great pay ($30,000 - and this is aside from his private practice) and perks because he realized he was selling his soul and was no longer willing to do so.

It's a readable book for the layman and I highly recommend it.  Time that more people realized that "the emperor has no clothes."  Our health, mental and otherwise, is at stake!

Psychiatry part 3

In Mishpacha magazine's supplement "Calligraphy" from Pesach (which usually has fiction but this time had non-fiction), there is a very disturbing story about a third grader in Israel who was doing wonderfully in school until he began speaking less and less and was diagnosed by a pediatrician with selective mutism (which does not explain anything, just describes the fact that the child isn't talking).

He began to withdraw socially and then stopped speaking altogether. A psychologist had him draw on a paper, asked the parents whether the child had experienced any trauma, and when they said they no, the psychologist said she thought he was reacting to a severe trauma or was psychotic and to bring him back in a week.

Rather than explore what might be bothering the child who had been 100% normal till then, a week later the same psychologist recommended that they take him to a psychiatrist because she decided that his condition was dire.

Based on this, they actually picked up and moved the family to Yerushalayim! (yes, they asked a shaila and sorry to say, the psychologist's opinion was adhered to like it was the word of G-d).

Unbelievably, this poor child was enrolled in a special needs school. Interestingly, he still sang zemiros at the Shabbos table but otherwise, he was doing worse.

They took him to a pediatric psychiatrist. Their child was 10 and a half and the change had begun three months before. Without interacting with the child at all, this rasha of a doctor declared that the boy was either experiencing clinical depression or psychosis and he wrote out a prescription.

Around the third visit, the child went over and touched the fax machine and this doctor yelled at him, stood up and forcefully waved his hand and said, "Get away from there! You're psychotic, yes you're psychotic!" And he wrote out another prescription.

This is a pediatric psychiatrist!? Why, oh why, did this evil person specialize in working with children when he hates them? And by what did he write out a prescription without thoroughly examining the child?

The story goes on. They administer drug and after drug to the child who gets worse and worse.  He had terrible side effects from the drugs, was diagnosed with schizophrenia, was confined in a psychiatric hospital, was severely beaten and abused by the Arab driver of the van that took him to his institution, and then a particular drug was credited for helping him get back to normal.

The parents did what they thought was best. I feel sad for them and the miserable experience they had, uprooting their family and everything that happened, but it needs to be said: Nobody bothered trying to find out what made a previously normal 10 year old withdraw. These medical doctors are trained to diagnose pathology.  Mental illness is nebulous, usually with no physical evidence of a physiological problem and as in the case with the "Girl in the Green Sweater" and the woman in the "True Healing" post, drugs and mental illness labels were not what was needed.  A person reaching out in kindness with the way to the person's heart is what was needed.

This reminds me of an article I read about a year ago about a man who came to the US to collect tzedaka so he could pay for a wedding.  Once in America he was unable to get himself out of bed.  A friend took him to a psychiatrist and you'll never guess how the MD treated him .... Are you ready? Have you guessed? Yes! He wrote a prescription for an anti-depressant!

Now tell me, if the doctor had written out a hefty check for the person, or if the fundraiser had unexpectedly won the lottery, would he be depressed? Nope.  Would he need drugs? Nope. So why are we, as a society, allowing our fears and sadness to be treated with drugs?

Psychiatry part 2

I recently read another two things (in addition to my "True Healing" post, two posts ago) that have reinforced my strong feelings about psychiatry. 

I am almost finished reading "The Girl in the Green Sweater" by Krystyna Chiger about how she survived the Holocaust at age 7 by hiding in the sewers beneath the city of Lvov for fourteen months.  After many months underground and enduring horrific living conditions (swarming rats, for one thing) the usually cheerful girl became silent, sullen and sad.  She did not feel like eating, talking or doing anything.  It's what a psychiatrist would diagnose as childhood depression.

Her mother was desperate about her, thinking her temperament was changed forever and so she told the Polish man who was their protector about her concern.  The Pole led her through the pipes and said, "Let me show you something."  She crawled through and then climbed a ladder which led to an opening to the street where she could see sunlight through the grate.  It was the first sunshine she had seen in over a year.  She heard children playing outside.

He said to her, "You have to be strong, little one.  In just a few days, you will be up there playing with the other children.  You will smell the same flowers."

And she writes "And in this way I became whole again," thanks to him.

What would a psychiatrist have done for her? Without a doubt, reached for his prescription pad and drugged her.

(more in the next post)

True Healing

Rachel Naomi Remen is a medical doctor who opened a practice where she speaks to seriously ill and suffering people and through her wisdom and caring guides them towards emotional healing.  In "Kitchen Table Wisdom" she describes a woman who was intensely grieving the loss of the love of her life.  Her grief was so acute, way beyond the norm, that a psychiatrist diagnosed her as having "reactive depression" and he treated her with progressively more powerful antidepressants which did not work.

She had several sessions with Dr. Remen in which she opened up about her pain which enabled her to move forward.

That's the chapter in a nutshell.  I won't repeat what the woman's thought process was and how Dr. Remen's suggestions broke through her numbness.  What outraged me about this episode is how the medical community, psychiatrists in particular, seek to label symptoms and drug us rather than heal us.  What the grief-stricken woman needed was not drugs to mask her symptoms (and give her numerous side effects to suffer from) but someone to truly listen to her and show her that she had the choice to move on.

We have numerous statements in Torah sources about the mind-body connection and yet we too, in the frum world, have fallen prey to drugging symptoms in children and adults.  We need wise people amongst us whom we can turn to; people who don't view coping mechanisms as medical illnesses; people who can listen and provide wise guidance within a Torah framework to those who are suffering; people who will talk about emuna and bitachon and simcha rather than diagnose syndromes and disorders.

Alarmist and Unhelpful Approach to Postpartum Depression

The frum world is doing its best to publicize more and more articles about mental illnesses and disorders.  One topic that is quite popular is post-partum depression.  In an ad for a new book published for frum people on this topic, it is claimed that PPD affects 80% of women after childbirth.  Nitza - The Jerusalem Postpartum Support Network claims 85% of women have some PPD reactions for a few weeks.

What doesn't come across clearly, is that they are referring to feelings of mild depression, crying spells, anxiety, irritability, and mood swings which, if the truth be told, women occasionally feel even without giving birth.  It is quite normal when experiencing hormonal changes and sleep deprivation to feel this way.  This is not postpartum depression.

This is a letter that I wrote to a frum publication about their handling of this topic:

In your about postpartum depression a doctor is quoted as comparing postpartum depression to diabetes and says that just as a diabetic must take medication, a woman experiencing postpartum depression must take medication.

Yet later in the article, Michal Finkelstein RN CNM says, “A loving friend, neighbor, relative, or spouse can intervene with kindness and empathy … this along with some physical support (childcare, meal preparation, and housework assistance) may even be enough to help her overcome her postpartum depression.” In other words, the comparison to diabetes is fallacious, for even if a diabetic is offered the optimum in moral and physical support, this will not help their insulin problem!

I’ve noticed that lately, the diabetes analogy is used quite regularly for conditions that bear no resemblance to diabetes. For reasons peculiar to our culture today, people prefer hearing that their condition is medical and requiring medication, rather than something they can overcome with the proper emotional, physical, spiritual help and Torah guidance.

I feel for the woman in the article who was recommended hospitalization and Prozac and I believe her when she says, “I’m not sick. You don’t understand what I’m feeling. I don’t need that. I just want someone to talk to and hold my hand.”

I think that providing listening ears and physical help will go a long way towards alleviating and eliminating most postpartum depression.

***
Unfortunately, frum sources tend to push medication and even when they mention nipping the problem in the bud with proper physical and moral support, the latter is drowned out by the medical model.

The way I'd like to see it written is:

Postpartum depression may or may not require medical intervention. As a first resort, women should be strongly encouraged by their spouse, doctor, and anybody who is concerned for their welfare, to take it easy, accept help, not be a martyr, to value their health over their independently taking care of everything, and to postpone commitments to the community and to their family that jeopardize their state of well-being. If women have been given the moral and physical help they need and still experience depression, then they should seek out medical intervention, but in the vast majority of cases, moral support, physical help, and reduced demands, are what a woman needs.