Recently, a popular Northern California high school teacher left a cryptic message for her students and then disappeared. She was found dead a few days later in a creek near her house, a mix of booze and drugs in her system. In the past year, she'd experienced the death of a few close relatives. Then her husband filed for divorce.
Can divorce be a tipping point when someone is emotionally unstable or mentally ill?
Maybe, because divorce doesn't have such a great track record.
Even the "best" divorces are stressful; it's second on the stress meter right after death of a spouse, after all. But add something like mental illness into the mix, and there's a lot more to stress about. And there are a lot of people living with mental disorders in the United States, about 1 in 4 adults in a given year, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. About 1 in 17 have a serious mental disorder such as bipolar, schizophrenia or borderline personality disorder.
A sobering fact is that more than 90 percent of those who kill themselves have a diagnosable mental disorder, accounting for the tens of thousands of suicides each year (34,300 in 2007 alone). And many of them are men. In fact, four times as many men commit suicide than women, although women attempt suicide more often -- two to three times as often as men. One of the reasons listed is divorce.
It's no surprise that divorce plays a factor in suicide. Your life feels like it's been slipped out from under you like a rug. For some, divorce is so devastating that they believe they have nothing to live for. Divorced people are three times more likely to commit suicide than those who are married. Again, it is men who are more at risk; one study found that divorced men have twice the risk of suicide than married men.
Not only can divorce spur depression, but depression can, evidently, spur divorce.
Marriages in which one spouse is depressed are nine times more likely to end up in divorce, according to Laura Epstein Rosen and Xavier Francisco Amador, authors of When Someone You Love is Depressed: How to Help Your Loved One Without Losing Yourself. That's a pretty depressing number. It isn't depression itself that sends a couple to divorce attorneys, however, but the consequences of not addressing the depression, experts say. And most of us aren't very good at that.
"Our loved ones see our illness far differently than we do," writes John McManamy, an award-winning mental health journalist and author who has bipolar disorder and blogs at McMan's Depression and Bipolar Web. "We may complain that they don't understand us, but far too many of us fail to recognize the horrible abuse we have put them through."
It isn't easy living with someone who has a mental illness, nor does everyone reach such a happy ending as the story of John Forbes Nash Jr., a Princeton mathematician and schizophrenic who was the subject of 2001's A Beautiful Mind. Often a depressed spouse withdraws or cheats. Sometimes the spouse of the depressed person feels responsible and becomes more of a caretaker than a partner. Not only is that exhausting, but it doesn't make for a happy, healthy marriage.
Even treatments for mental illness can cause problems in a marriage; many of the meds can impact a person's sexual responses and desire. Plus there is still a lot of shame and guilt surrounding mental illness, although there's more awareness now than ever before.
But if one spouse has a serious mental disorder and maybe has even talked about suicide, how does one even ask for a divorce if whatever problems in the marriage can't be resolved?
Very carefully, I suppose, if at all. At least that's how it is for a friend. His wife has struggled with depression for most of her life and refuses to take any meds. While he would do just about anything to have a more loving and sexual marriage, he won't even consider a divorce, mostly because of their children. And because she has often talked about suicide, and even attempted it, and he struggles with the thought of her offing herself if they split. So, he stays married -- frustrated and walking on eggshells.
That doesn't make for a happy, healthy marriage, either.
While it may seem cruel to divorce someone who's suicidal, part of removing the stigma of mental illness is accepting that everyone, mentally ill or not, is not only marriageable but divorceable, too.
What would you do?
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Barbara Crafton: The Church's Role in Understanding Depression and Faith
I am going to another topic.
Do not commit sucide. Seek help for depression.
What I learned by going though several years of hell is, no matter what the counselors tell you about seeking help, in reality there is no help or support of any kind available when your spouse develops debilitating mental illness. No matter how crazy they are acting, you can't do a d***ed thing about it until they get violent enough to actually hurt somebody.
After divorce the problem is, of course, "presumptive equality" of fault. If you even so much as hint in court that your ex is probably not the world's best person to leave alone with a small child then YOU become the bitter ex and guilty of parental alienation. That's why the news is full of situations like poor little 4 yo Ethan Stacey who was beaten to death by his crazy mom because Florida courts declared her an "equal" parent.
So sometimes the choice is, stay with the insane person in order to try to protect the kids or try to protect yourself by leaving and put the children at risk. The propaganda that mental illness is just another medical issue like cancer is spurious. Mentally ill people can put everyone around them at risk.
Comparing a physical impairment with a mental illness is like apples and oranges.
Does a person who lost a leg cause them to beat you? Demean you? Threaten to kill you or hurt the children? No. Not the physical loss of the leg I am talking about.
But a person with a mental illness whose symptoms cause them to threaten suicide, demean you or otherwise harm you and your children is no way to live. It is not healthy for anyone.
Everyone deserves to find happiness and marriage is a big part of that. It is your life too. You can't allow another to control your life and make you miserable.
Inform a doctor or the police about the problem so the person has support, then get on with your life....get a divorce.
By the way, marriage does not make you an expert in psychology or therapy. That is who he (she) needs, not a spouse.
My ex-husband was a paranoid schizophrenic. I have deep sympathy for the struggles he experiences in his life as a result of this disease. But he held a gun to my head one night and a knife to my throat another. I listened to his elaborate plans to kill me and dispose of my body on several other occasions. My sympathy for his illness could not treat it, and there was no living with it either.
After my husband told me he was gonna kill himself because of his own stupid behavior (drinking), I recognized it for what it was...manipulation. I told him 'go ahead'. Only after more than a HUNDRED TIMES dealing with the same threat.
Did he? Of course not. He was forced to get help.
However, I also don't think that it's automatically a deal breaker that people part ways if one in the couple has a mental disease. Decide what's healthy and safe. What doesn't kill you sometimes makes you stronger, sometimes it sucks all the life out of you.
The one time that a doctor told him he had to stop taking his meds for 3 days I told him to call the doctor back and make sure that he knew he'd be staying with him those 3 days. He was told that he didn't need to stop taking his meds....problem solved. He knows where I stand and he has no problem with doing what he needs to make me feel safe.
You assume people "cut and run" at first glance of issue----instead of wondering if perhaps they were simply worn down form YEARS of trying to accommodate a mental health issue. Does the "healthy half" of the equation" have to be suicidal too, or are they simply too allow the other half to destroy their sanity, and possibly their childrens before you think it's ok for them to go?
Depression for me is not temporary, it is the condition with which I must manage somehow - a permanent problem for which suicide presents at least one out. To dismiss this and assure oneself with this bump sticker wisdom, well, you will not see it coming.
The next day I filed for divorce. When he received
the divorce papers he then my ex said,
I don't know why you are doing this I love you.
I said, when you love someone you do not try
to hurt them, you try to make them happy.
That's my story and I am sticking to it.
The last thing I would want to hear is "If I can't have you, no one will".. Baby I'm going out to to get me a subway sandwich.... 25-30 years later I hope she's still around waiting for me to come home.
Bottom line...unless you are terminally ill, the act of suicide will damage people you know, who care for you. It's selfish, and cruel, and giving into the threat will only lead to the next demand..."do what I want...or else...: How can anyone survive that sort of emotional blackmail?
That sounds like the definition of evil to me.
That said, I am truly sympathetic to your point. I reject the idea that all suicides stem from mental instability, but even in such a case, to what extent is one's perception their reality? Who has the right to judge another's experience of life? Noone... and I believe the kind of shaming you describe comes from such a judgement having been formed and held.
Ideally, such a person could still find the strength and inspiration to take another life path (one worthy of their effort), eventually attracting and replacing the selfish contingent around them with a more gregarious, altruistic bunch. The idea that someone should choose death to escape (real or percieved) rejection, abandonment, or another judgement of their life's value by others, is most certainly at least as repugnant as the idea that they should stick around just to appease them-- don't you think?
And you really have no idea what you are talking about.
The voices in this thread are not uncaring people...but there IS such a thing as too much, or being stretched too thin by someone else's issues.
I'm lucky that meds keep my husband even, without them I'd be afraid to even have my dogs around him, never mind my son or grandchildren. If he were to refuse to take his meds I would do what i could for him but I would not be able to live with him in those circumstances.