Then, and for years later, King assured her children that her illness was not their fault. She now believes it sprang from a mix of hormones, unreasonable demands she placed on herself as a mother, her reluctance to provide care for herself, and the memory of bitter quarrels between her parents when she was young. While support groups help women like King, a new generation of feminist mental health professionals is developing special ways to treat women with depression and anxiety. On the drug front, Dorian is looking at ways to fine-tune classical antidepressants to make them more effective for women. Women, for instance, respond more slowly to antidepressant drugs and may be helped by certain hormones and drugs that do not work on men.
Parents can play a role, too, by promoting healthy self-esteem in their daughters.
While she believes that only political and social change can resolve the problem, she says parents can help by encouraging their daughters to play sports and to decode TV ads that play on women s insecurities. And mothers can be role models by taking care of themselves rather than playing the martyr. That is one lesson Linda King learned in the years it took her to come to terms with her depression.