#stuart scott

CW: careless talk about postpartum depression

I've been avoiding this introductory story from Dr. Dionne because it's so horrifying. I'll just quote the whole thing.

Karen is a 30 year old woman who grew up in our church and has parents who were missionaries in Venezuela when she grew up. She has three children and one is less than two months old. She and her husband have been married for 10 years, and she professed Christ when she was a girl, and her husband also grew up in our church, and he just got a job as a police officer, and he's working the graveyard shift. And after her second baby, she suffered with postpartum depression. Now her baby's crying every night, and her husband has gone during the night, and he has to sleep during the day, and she's not getting enough. She is having angry outbursts, and she's very unhappy, so she went to her doctor and was given antidepressants for postpartum depression, and she hoped it would help. But she only took it for three days and seemed to get worse, so she stopped taking the medicine. Her doctor told her if she could not tolerate the medication, she would need to get counseling. And she doubted if it would work for her. She felt like she had known God her whole life, and she doubted that God loved her which is very common when people are depressed.

Picture the scene. This mother has no sleep and a newborn. She has the flood of postpartum hormones -- a wallop for everyone -- but this is in the depression territory. Her husband is absent.

Her medical doctor (at least according to the story) is basically doing nothing. She's not taking the meds -- probably because she's been told at their church that meds are wrong.

But Dionne goes on. Guess what the BJU-trained counselor suggests. Yup -- MEMORY VERSES! But lo and behold, what does she discover??!??!?

So my wife Kelly started meeting with her, and she met with her every week and she started off by having her memorize scripture. And as Kelly was getting to know her, she learned about some sin Karen had committed with her husband when they before they got married. And they had never asked her, repented of this to each other or repented before God.

"Some sin."

Dionne never says it, but he's attributing allll the problems to that "sin." It's probably sexual relations with her now-husband before they were married. At least, that's the way Dionne sets it up.

He goes on:

And this was a very important time when her husband came to counseling with her, and they apologized to each other and they confessed to God their sin. From this, she learned that she actually had to seek forgiveness from some other people in her life. She would have lots of anger, and as they spent more time counseling, it became clear that she had some wrong expectations about her life. What was the problem? Well, she wanted life to be comfortable and easy, and it wasn't. As she was being counseled, Kelly taught her how important her thoughts are, the thoughts she deserved an easy and a fun life. And to be had to be replaced with right expectations about. So whenever anything went wrong in her life, she would doubt God and become angry with him. She learned that God was using the hard things for her good, showing her her desperate need for him. Anybody learning that right now suffering is so good for me.

Everybody stop.

Is anyone taking care of the baby during the day so that Dad and Mom can sleep? Is anyone taking care of this family? Is anyone talking to the Dad and explaining, "You need a different shift." Is anyone offering the Dad a different job?

These are real things that can be done that are not "memorizing verses" or plumbing the depths of a 20-something's life.

Where are the older moms who can come in to help? The grandmas? The aunts?

Medication is important too. But hello!!?? You don't need a license to be a decent human being.

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