Various Interviews of Writers & Activists

Copyright 2003 Boston Globe

 A writer and human rights activist, Styron has published
three books of poetry. William Styron, her husband, is a novelist and writer.

   Q. Your husband was first hospitalized for depression in 1985, and out
of that experience was born his book, How has he fared since?

   A. He had one minor episode about three years later, when he was about
to go into the hospital for a major operation. But that didn't last very
long. He was OK until the year 2000. It started last June and he's just
pulling out of it now. This was far worse even than the one in 1985. He's
home from the hospital now and getting better.

   I would say the obvious trigger was the death of his two dogs last May,
but it had been coming on. He recently had a major birthday - 75 - and
he had been muttering about age and dreading things and then when his two
old dogs who had been his companions for 13 and 14 years died, he saw that, I think, as a metaphor for his own age.

   Q. How does a family member's depression affect the rest of the family?

   A. I think there is no untouched person. A loved one's depression affects
every member of the family, whether it's the children, the wife, the parent
. . . suddenly, you find your relationship with the depressed person obviously
changed. There are rejections felt; it takes a long time to realize it
is not the family member's fault, it's the illness. It can set up psychological
difficulties for various members of the family, or make them incredibly
anxious.

   Q. Is there anything positive you can say to a family whose loved one
is experiencing depression?

   A. There is a great deal of positive effect on the family. Depression
brings the family much closer together. At least, it made all of us examine
our lives together and separately much more honestly and to become much
closer in caring for each other, and in our concern for Bill. All the kids
rallied around and I think that was one of the most positive things for
Bill in making him want to live instead of die. He saw what a wonderful
family he had and that they all still loved him and were pulling for him.

   Q. What advice do you have for family members and friends?

   A. I advise people to be observant every minute, to see what the changes
in behavior, habit, ideas, and perceptions are. If you've lived with somebody
a long time, you very quickly notice. You have to stop, look, and listen.
You have to urge them to get help, but you must monitor the help. In the
beginning, I just trusted Bill to the doctors, and then I found that the
doctors were not necessarily talking to each other and that often conflicting
things were happening, so medication and treatment would be prescribed
which should have been proscribed. So you have to be there all the time
and not just turn them over to the medical profession, no matter how good,
because it's you who knows much more about him than someone who has come into the picture and is treating him by the book.

   LAUREN SLATER      A clinical psychologist and therapist in Somerville,
Slater is author of  numerous books on depression.  She was hospitalized and suffered bouts of mental illness that started
in her teens.

   Q. In one of your books, you give a harrowing account of the effects of
depression on pregnancy. How did you reconcile the two?

   A. Prior to getting pregnant, I did a lot of research on what the risks
were to being on medication while pregnant. I had decided that the risks
of going off the medication for me outweighed the benefits. And then, when
I saw that positive pregnancy test the morning of Sept. 21, 1998, I proceeded to dump all the medications down the drain. . . . I think while I had been very thorough and cerebral in my approach, in my heart, I remained afraid of what the medication could potentially do to the baby.

   Q. What happened when you went off the meds?

   A. The symptoms of depression came back with supercharged strength,
more than I had anticipated. The abrupt discontinuance [of antidepressants],
the fact that I have an illness that needs daily treatment, and the hormonal
effects of pregnancy . . . it was awful, just awful. The choice was to
go back on meds or abort, because I was completely unable to function.

   Q. What do you recommend for pregnant women who are on antidepressants?

   A. Given the huge hormonal changes going on, pregnancy is a slippery
slope. It doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, it's just something to be aware
of and think about. What I found was that I had to go back on medication,
but very large doses, and then I added another drug in the second trimester.

   Q. Would you go through pregnancy again?

   A. My daughter is beautiful and she's just fine. In some ways, I would
really like to have another child. But I am really afraid to put myself
and my child at risk like that again. To not be functional and to have
a child to take care of, that's a really hard question. I think I probably
won't do it again. We're actually thinking of adopting.

   SUSANNA KAYSEN

   Novelist and author of the memoir "Girl, Interrupted," Kaysen was 18
when she began a two-year psychiatric hospitalization at MacLean.

   Q. You write that melancholy is useful, and you make the case for pessimism. Give us your best argument.

   A. If you're a pessimist like I am, you get your disappointment over
beforehand. I don't even see it as pessimism, I see it as realism. Why
would you want to be optimistic? I think being super happy is an American
obsession. Europeans know that life has its ups and downs and being unhappy is part of life. They don't think it's a mental illness. They have a more reasonable view of the human condition, and this makes them happier.

   Q. But aren't Americans more depressed than ever?

   A. No, that's not true. Americans think they're depressed because they
don't realize that life has its ups and downs. I think Americans have a
low threshold for being slightly miserable. . . . I think it's a great
epidemic of over-labeling or intolerance of weirdness, of sadness, and
an inability to label badness as badness. I think of all these kooky young
men who go out and shoot people. They weren't depressed, they were bad,
they were wicked.

   Q. But you do acknowledge that depression does exist?

   A. Yes, there are things in life worth being depressed over. But there's
an inability to distinguish between mourning and depression. People say,
`Oh, I'm so depressed. All my books got rejected and my mother's dead and I don't have a boyfriend.'

   Q. So what is the difference between mourning and melancholy?

   A. Grieving has a natural terminus. It's a self-limiting illness. You
get over grieving; eventually, you do recover and usually, people take
about a year. Depression can be interminable, it can come and go. Obviously, there are some people who are genetically predisposed to depression.

   Q. Are there any benefits to depression?

   A. Just imagine the world without depression. You wouldn't have the
Emancipation Proclamation. You wouldn't have art. You wouldn't have science. You wouldn't have `For Whom the Bell Tolls.' You wouldn't have `Hamlet.' You wouldn't have zippers or lightbulbs. You probably wouldn't even have things like creme brulee. Actually, I can't back up the zipper or the light bulbs or the creme brulee. [Laughs].

 

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