Episode 65: Losing my Mom with Tierra Kessler

Today's episode is about loss, specifically Tierra's loss of her mom to suicide while she was in college. If this topic is too heavy for you right now, that is totally understandable, and I'll see you when I come back for season 4.

You can find Teirra on IG as @tierra.kessler

About Suicide:

This information is coming from American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) and can be found at afsp.org

Suicide is the 12th leading cause of death in the US as of 2020, and 1.3% of deaths worldwide in 2019. Worldwide, men are twice as likely as women to commit suicide, but here in the US, they are almost 4 time as likely to die to suicide. In fact, in the US, the highest rate of suicide is middle aged white males. However adult females report a suicide attempt about 1.5 times more often then males- and high school ages females attempt suicide almost twice as often as their male counterparts (based on 2019 data collected).

There are some risk factors identified by AFSP that include mental health conditions including depression and substance abuse, as well as access to lethal means, exposure to sensationalized accounts of suicide, a history of suicide attempts, and childhood trauma.

They also identify warning signs such as: talking about killing themselves, being a burden to others, feeling trapped; increased use in alcohol or other drugs, withdrawing from family, friends, and social activities, giving away prized possessions; anxiety, loss of interest, anger, and shame.

If you are in a crisis, you can call 800-273-8255, which is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline here in the US.

About Depression:

My information is found on the website for the National Institute of Mental Health (nimh.nih.gov).

There are different forms of depression, including postpartum depression (as Tierra mentioned her mom suffering from), as well as persistent depressive disorder, psychotic depression, seasonal affective disorder (or winter depression), and bipolar disorder (which isn't technically depression, but it was included because of the lows that someone with bipolar experiences).

21 million adults have had at least 1 major depressive episode- and that rate is higher for females than for males (10.5% compared to 6.2%). In 2020 alone, 14.8 million adults had a depressive episode with a severe impairment.

Depression will present differently for everyone- but some of the most common symptoms are feelings of helplessness, irritability, anxious or empty moods, difficulty sleeping or oversleeping, thoughts of death, and head or body aches that don't have another explanation. While it's typically diagnosed in adulthood, it's recognized as occurring in children and teens too. Major risk factors are a family or personal history of depression, trauma, and other physical illness.

For expectant moms, there are several factors highlighted that can make postpartum depression more likely, and those include a family or personal history of depression, a traumatic pregnancy or birth experiences, financial struggles, interpersonal relationship struggles, unplanned pregnancy, carrying twins or other multiples, and not having a support system to help care for your baby. Though we know that depression isn't because you do or do not do something, researchers do believe that it results from a mix of physical, emotional, and environmental factors.

Depression is treated through medication, psychotherapy, or both. There is also brain stimulation treatments if other treatments do not help. I am not an expert on those treatments- so I don't want to get into how they work, but if you are interested- again the website I found all of this info from is nimh.nih.gov