Copyright 1999 Gannett Company, Inc.
USA TODAY
May 7, 1999, Friday, FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A
LENGTH: 1836 words
HEADLINE:
'You have to go get help' Frightening experience now a tool to help others
BYLINE: Mimi Hall
BODY:
Tipper Gore, the top mental health adviser to the White House,
has long
promoted open discussion of mental illness and depression
to eliminate the
stigma associated with disorders of the brain.
In her 1996 book, Picture
This: A Visual Diary, she disclosed
that her mother suffered "serious
bouts of depression."
In an exclusive interview Thursday, the wife
of the vice president
for the first time revealed her own experience with
treatment
for depression. She remains reluctant to offer details of her
treatment and won't say, for example, how long she was in counseling
or
what type of medication she was given. She says she suffered
from
"situational depression" in the aftermath of a car accident
that almost took
the life of her then-6-year-old son, Albert Gore
III, in 1989. She is not
under treatment now.
Gore says she decided to go public now, on the eve of
her husband's
presidential campaign, because she is concerned about young
people
struggling with depression and she hopes her story will help others
realize that there's no shame in getting help.
The interview has
been edited for length and clarity.
Q: As I understand it, this came
about after your son's accident
and after you had gone through family
counseling, and you decided
you needed some additional help. Can you just
describe what that
time was like?
A: We've talked about family
counseling openly, and this is something
that was separate from that and
that happened later. What I hope
will help other people is (to know that)
sometimes when the immediate
traumatic event or emergency is over with, the
person who was
busy taking care of everything until its conclusion --
particularly
women -- often find that they have not taken care of themselves
and they are overly stressed. In my situation, when I discovered
that I
indeed was meeting some of the symptoms for depression
and went to a social
worker friend of mine to check it out, it
was, let's see, how can I put
this? Well, she told me at this
time that it was probably a result of
accumulation of things that
had happened in my life and it was much more of
a situational
depression. It was definitely a clinical depression and one
that
I was going to have to have help to overcome. What I learned about
it is your brain needs a certain amount of serotonin and when
you run
out of that, it's like running out of gas, it's like you're
on empty.
When you get to this point of being seriously depressed or what
we call "clinically depressed," you just can't will your way
out of that
or pray your way out of that or pull yourself up by
the boot straps out of
that. You really have to go and get help,
and I did. And I was treated for
it successfully, I'm happy to
report.
Q: Can you describe some
of what the symptoms were?
A: There is a checklist of warning signs,
symptoms for depression.
And I definitely met a number of those.
Q: Can you talk in a personal way about which ones?
A: I
could personalize it, yes, but one reason that I'm reluctant
to do that is
only because other people might have other symptoms.
Obviously, either
weight loss or weight gain would be one symptom.
I think people probably
noticed that I gained weight at a certain
point. For someone else it could
be weight loss. So I don't want
to be a model of how it looks. The real key
is to look down that
checklist and find out if any of those warning signs or
symptoms
meets something happening to you.
Q: Did you then go
through counseling with this social worker
as well being prescribed
medication?
A: I did. Yes. Through counseling with her, she said, "I
think
you're really seriously, you have clinical depression, this is
not
just a passing depression. Or it's not one I think you can
just get out of
with counseling alone." So I had the treatment
that also included
medication. That is what worked for me, but
there are, again, different
combinations that work for other people.
Q: And you don't want to
talk about what kind of medication
you were on?
A: Again, I will say
that medication helped me tremendously, but
I do not want to say what kind.
And the reason is that just recently
we saw a lot of publicity of a certain
anti-depressant for the
young person in Littleton, Colo. And that may work
wonders and
miracles for some other person.
I think that when
someone singles out a particular medication,
then someone's reading about it
saying, "I'm going to try that,"
or "Other things don't work as well." It's
not a one-size-fits-all
kind of answer. I just urge people if they feel like
they need
to go to a mental health professional, to do that and to seek
the kind of treatment that they and their professional design
for them.
Q: Was it frightening to admit to yourself and to come to grips
with the fact that you needed professional help?
A: Yes. It was
extremely frightening. I think it would be with
anybody who goes to a doctor
and finds out they have an illness
they have to deal with.
Q:
Was it more frightening to you in any way because your family
was in public
life and because obviously there's still a stigma?
A: That was probably
the thing farthest away from my mind, quite
frankly. I needed to take care
of myself, and I needed to do certain
things in order to restore myself to
my old self, and to be the
wife and the mother and the person I had always
been. And that
was all that was on my mind. Not how this was going to impact
public life or anything like that.
I wanted to get well as
quickly as possible so that I didn't shortchange
all the people that
depended on me. And I was working hard, like
anybody who has this illness,
on all cylinders and then (trying)
to pretend everything was fine. It's a
strange thing; it's kind
of the insidious nature of depression. From what
I've heard people
say it's hard for them to admit. They try to pretend that
everything
is just the way it's always been. And yet they feel like
something's
wrong -- they're not sure what it is.
Q: Knowing
you're not under treatment now, I wonder if you
consider yourself cured.
A: I do consider that I have recovered, that the treatment worked.
And I've been told that the chances are unlikely that it would
recur.
But as with other illnesses, once somebody has one I think
you're always on
guard. Watchful, let's say, just aware to make
sure you don't see signs or
symptoms of that recurring, whether
it's skin cancer or breast cancer.
Q: In your book you write that your mother suffered from serious
bouts of depression during your childhood and that it was made
much
worse by her fear that someone would find out, and she suffered
in silence.
Have you lived with any fear that people would find
out?
A: No, I
haven't, because although I haven't taken a step like
this until now, I
think that people who know me are not surprised.
I know people have
even talked to me before, you know -- "Oh,
that period in your life." Even
reporters -- "Oh, I know that
period in your life," and they just gloss
over. They're just
very respectful, and I've appreciated that because it's
very personal.
Q: Why this particular moment?
A: I'm
comfortable now. Some of the reasons are that I have been
talking to people
and to kids a lot over the last year or two
about what it is they're going
through. And depression and teen
suicide have come to the forefront from the
mouths of the kids
themselves in the schools that I have visited.
I was given the statistic that suicide is the second leading cause
of death among teen-agers, so I think it has made me feel that
now is
the right time to talk about this in personal terms instead
of just in
policy terms. I've been talking to folks, teens around
the country about all
kinds of things, maybe about schizophrenia,
about learning disabilities,
about eating disorders, etc. But
lately, more and more when I ask them,
"What is it that you're
dealing with?" it seems to be depression that they
come up and
tell me about. It just hit me that maybe we need to be more open
about this. Maybe I can be helpful; maybe it's time for me to
talk. And
if it helps one person, then I think it would have been
worthwhile.
Q: There's the obvious political question now that your husband's
presidential campaign is going to get under way, which probably
means
that the media are going to begin taking an even closer
look than before.
Has that been a concern, too?
A: Oh, no. Not really. There will be
additional scrutiny. I think
you know that when you get involved in a
campaign, particularly
in these days and times. But again, this is such a
personal illness,
and it's such a personal decision to speak out now.
Q: Do you believe there's a genetic predisposition toward
depression?
Does it concern you about your kids' future?
A: I'm not
sure. I'm very curious, and in fact with a lot of the
people I work with in
the mental health community I've asked,
"Do we have any research that show
genetic markers? Is there
a way to identify this particular gene?" There
isn't one yet.
I hope they will find one just like they're working toward in
other diseases.
Yes, any illness that runs in the family,
whether it's colon cancer
or diabetes or heart disease, you need to talk
about it. You need
to pay attention to early warning signs that you or your
children
might have it. We've discussed that as a family, of course. But
I was told that since I was somewhere in my 40s when this first
occurred
to me, and they said it's situational, that if it were
the other it would
have happened much, much younger.
But if your dad or your
grandfather had died of a heart attack
at age 50, obviously, you're going to
be watching for signs of
heart disease. And you're going to be telling your
children to
do the same thing.
Q: Can you tell me about the
White House Conference on mental
health?
A: It's June 7. It's a day
long at Howard University (in Washington).
What I hope will happen is that
we will eradicate the stigma forever
that's associated with
mental well-being and have parity in all
mental health coverage, plus much-needed culturally
sensitive
community-based services available in schools and other community
and other hospital settings.
We'd like to see the integration of
mental and physical health.
That's what we hope will come out of it.
Depression's warning signs
Warning signs of
depression include a long list of symptoms. Having
five or more that last at
least two weeks can indicate a major
depression.
Psychological
symptoms
-- Depressed or sad moods
-- Loss of interest in
usual activities, including sex
-- Feelings of hopelessness,
worthlessness, anxiety orextreme
guilt
-- Difficulty
concentrating
-- Thoughts of death or suicide
Physical
symptoms
-- Headaches, backaches
-- Stomach problems
-- Difficulty sleeping or sleeping all the time
--
Changes in weight and appetite
GRAPHIC:
PHOTO, color, Bob Galbraith, AP; PHOTO, b/w, Bob Galbraith, AP; Tipper Gore: 'I
needed to take care of myself.'
LOAD-DATE: May 07, 1999
