When Lucybeth Rampton suffered her first bout of depression 16 years ago, her doctors tried to keep it a secret.
Rampton, wife of former governor Calvin Rampton, said the doctors were concerned about what would happen "if word got out that the Gov had a crazy wife." Today mental illnesses, including depression, have come out of the closet, Rampton said, although there is still a need to eliminate the "s" words associated with them: scorn, shame and stigma.Rampton, 76, was keynote speaker at the "Women Supporting Women" health forum at the Excelsior Hotel sponsored by Intermountain Health Care and the Women in Management Council of Utah County. Rampton experienced her first bout of depression in 1974, during her husband's third term in office.
Rampton said doctors are unsure what set off her depressive bout, although a genetic biochemical cause may be indicated because both her grandmother and mother suffered from depression. She doesn't believe it was the rigors of life in the political spotlight.
"If it had been the pressures of the office, it would have happened sooner," she said.
During the first "episode" - a pastel term for what depression really is, according to Rampton - she didn't realize what was happening to her. Her son-in-law, a clinical psychiatrist, did, however, and provided her initial treatment.
"It begins for me with self-doubt," Rampton said. "All of a sudden nothing I can do is right. The world turns gray. I don't find pleasure in anything.
"If I get down far enough, I reach despair. I've been down to what I call bedrock a number of times." On at least two occasions, Rampton battled suicidal impulses.
"Depression is one of the principal mental illnesses," Rampton said. "It is a mood disorder. It is not a sin, it is not a weakness of will or a pull-yourself-together disease. It is the blues grown out of proportion and all self-control."
In some cases, depression is fatal, Rampton said. A report given at the 1985 American Psychiatric Association annual meeting indicated that 20,000 suicides each year are caused by depression.
In the past 16 years, Rampton's doctor (not her son-in-law) has tried everything from lithium and Prozac to electroshock and psychotherapy. Because she builds resistance to the drugs she is given, Rampton has to switch medications continually.
"I used to be afraid of the disease itself," she said. "I am not afraid of the disease anymore . . . but I am afraid of some of the new drugs. I have to have a lot of reassurance (to try them)." Rampton said there is no cure for chronic depression; genetic studies continue to search out its causes, and new drugs for combating the disorder are constantly being developed.
The media are helping to eliminate the scorn, shame and stigma of depression by bringing to the public's attention advances in treatment and understanding of the disorder and profiles of individuals with such mental illnesses.
"We are living in a time of hope - we meaning mental patients, we meaning the family of mental patients, and we meaning the health-care workers," Rampton said. "Mental illness is now out of the closet. Stigma (associated with such illnesses) . . . is fading away and in time will become extinct."
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Who gets depressed?
Depression is the most common psychological disorder. Women are at least twice as likely as men to suffer a major bout of depression during their lifetimes. Factors associated with a higher risk:
-Being female
-Lower socioeconomic status
-Being separated or divorced
-Experiencing stressful life events
-Lacking an intimate confiding relationship
-Economic and/or emotional dependency
-Low self-esteem and the tendency to become obsessed
-Patterns of thinking that tend to be rigid, negative, over-personalized and over-generalized.