Suicide: One Mother's Tragic Story Of Battle With Depression

Jet, July 2, 2001 by Nicole Walker

Melanie Stokes wanted to be a mother more than anything else in life.

One close friend of the 41-year-old Chicago native and pharmaceutical sales manager recalled how Melanie once remarked, "I would sacrifice myself before I would ever hurt my child."

Melanie believed motherhood was her life mission and fiercely wanted a daughter of her own, even after she was told by doctors that she could never conceive.

This is the Melanie who her loved ones want to remember. Not the tortured soul who, on an early Monday morning in June-31/2 months after giving birth to her first child-plunged 12 stories from the tiny window ledge of a Chicago hotel as firefighters pleaded with her to not jump.

Melanie's suicide, and her uncharacteristic behavior in the months following the birth of her daughter, Sommer Skyy, were the result of postpartum psychosis--the most severe, yet rare, postpartum psychiatric disorder marked by delusions and hallucinations, severe insomnia, extreme anxiety, paranoia, suicidal or homicidal thoughts and depression.

Postpartum psychosis occurs in 1 out of 1,000 women who give birth. Experts say that its onset is sudden and usually appears in the first two to three weeks after childbirth. And while most women, fortunately, will not have to endure what Melanie suffered, a majority of new mothers experience varying degrees of depression after giving birth. And like Melanie, they're clueless and frightened about what's happening to them.

"The moment that the sperm hits the egg, your body changes dramatically," informs Joyce Venis, R.N.C., director of nursing at Princeton Family Care Associates in Princeton, NJ, and president of Depression After Delivery Inc. "If you could chart the hormones and the changes you have with them, it would look like a road map that you couldn't read. There's a lot of turmoil in your body. And some women's bodies don't adjust as easily as others."

For those who don't adjust easily to these drastic hormonal changes, disorders such as the baby blues, postpartum depression and at the extreme end of the spectrum-postpartum psychosis--can result.

Melanie's husband, Dr. Sam Stokes, 34, a surgeon at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, tells JET he first noticed something was amiss with Melanie about five weeks after she gave birth.

"You expect your wife to be really tired and really worn out from feeding a newborn every two hours," he says. "The difficulty comes in knowing just how much of that is normal for having a new baby and how much is depression."

Exports say at least 50 to 75 percent of all new mothers undergo the baby blues, a feeling of letdown after the emotional experience of childbirth. The baby blues is the most common and least severe of all the postpartum reactions, and it usually subsides within one or two weeks. The blues occurs in the first few days after childbirth and symptoms may include unexplained mood swings, weepiness, irritability, restlessness and anxiety.

On the more serious side, postpartum depression affects at least one in 10 new mothers. Symptoms are the same as the baby blues and may also include: a lack of interest in the baby, fear of harming the baby and one's self, fatigue, sadness, hopelessness, guilt, inadequacy and worthlessness. Melanie initially was diagnosed with postpartum depression during her six-week checkup.

"It's a monster that enters their brains," says Melanie's mother, Carol Blocker, 63, a fifth-grade teacher in Chicago. "She told me, `You have no idea what's going on inside my brain.' Her thought process became different. She didn't talk about the baby. She talked about hopelessness."

Mrs. Blocker says that Melanie initially asked her not to tell Sam about her depression. "She felt she wouldn't be a good wife for Sam," Mrs. Blocker reveals. "She felt Sam would leave her because her looks were changing. She felt she was a bad mother. She said the baby ruined her life."

Experts say that new mothers who suffer with depression and other postpartum disorders usually have a history of depression or some other traumatic episode during their lives, such as physical, emotional or sexual abuse.

But again, experts say this does not always have to be the case. Experts do indicate that sometimes depression and other postpartum episodes are sparked solely by the pregnancy and childbirth experience. According to Melanie's family, she had no prior history of depression or mental illness, and she had a normal pregnancy.

"Depression is a whole body illness," informs Dr. Carole D. Stovall, a Washington, D.C.-based psychologist who deals with issues such as postpartum depression. "As people of color are more likely to be depressed because people of color have more things in life that cause depression." She adds that one out of every four people, pregnant or otherwise, experiences depression in their lives.

As Melanie's depression deepened in the severe psychosis, her family had her hospitalized four times. During the entire ordeal, she stopped eating and drinking. Her behavior grew more erratic. At one point after she was released, she wandered out of her house at 3 a.m. and went to the lakefront. Another time she asked a neighbor if he owned a gun. She became fixated with windows and would remove the screens and stare outside.