Post-90s only children send their depressed parents to the psychiatry department.

Something Is Wrong with Parents

First is the nagging.

At the beginning of this year, 34-year-old Carol brought her mother to live in Shanghai for a month. From the moment she entered the door, her mother started nagging, saying that the house was not as clean and tidy as she imagined, and even exaggerating, "It's like a kennel."

Then there is the increasingly tough interference.

That night, Carol, who has always had the habit of feeding stray cats, planned to go downstairs to feed the cats, but her mother stopped her, "Don't feed them, go to bed quickly." Carol began to feel uncomfortable, thinking that her mother always used her own logic to interfere with her normal life.

Gradually, this kind of interference becomes more and more excessive. Even when the two were relaxing and washing their feet, Carol wanted to soak for a while longer while the water was still warm, but her mother asked her to dry her feet immediately after the foot bath bucket finished massaging. Even to make Carol act quickly, she would even snatch Carol's phone.

The conflict between the mother and daughter finally broke out one night.

At 3 am one day, when the mother got up at night, she found Carol sleeping on her side. Because she was worried that it would aggravate her posture problem, she forcibly turned Carol back to a flat position. Carol, who was awakened in a fright, got up in a bad mood and lost her temper with her mother. The mother also argued with her, "I'm doing this for your own good." The two argued until 4 am, and Carol, who was angry, didn't sleep all night.

Since starting college in 2008, Carol has never lived with her mother so closely. Later, she left her hometown to go to Shanghai for graduate school, and the time she spent with her mother was even less. Sometimes she wouldn't call once a week. Only when her mother was sick or wanted to buy something would Carol pay attention to her mother's recent situation.

During these days living with her mother, the conflicts between the two are more than in the previous ten years. Carol also thought about communicating with her mother on the matter, but her mother always felt that Carol was finding fault and attacking her, as if everything she did in front of her daughter was wrong.

In Shanghai, Carol takes her mother to have Western food

Carol remembered that a friend diagnosed with depression was also like this, "Very normal words, they will hear them as negative," she speculated that her mother should have a psychological problem.

Huang Liling, who is 30 years old this year, also found that her mother was not right.

The process is very sudden.

It was one night during the Spring Festival holiday in 2022. A rapid breathing sound came from her mother's room. Huang Liling rushed to her mother's side and saw that she couldn't catch her breath for a long time, as if she was about to suffocate. It was the first time Huang Liling saw her mother like this, and she was so scared that she hurriedly sent her to the county hospital.

In the emergency room, the doctor put her mother on a ventilator to relieve her symptoms. After a round of examinations, the doctor said, " Actually, there is nothing wrong with you. It's just a psychological effect that makes you feel that you can't breathe. " She asked her mother why she was nervous, and her mother only then informed the other party that she had been diagnosed with depression a year ago and was taking medicine.

Huang Liling was shocked. How could the mother who always talked to her gently on the phone and seemed very normal usually, suffer from depression?

Later, she learned from her father that her mother had not been able to urinate in 2021 and had not been able to sleep for two weeks. Her father took her to see a doctor and she was diagnosed with menopausal depression.

It is not uncommon for middle-aged and elderly people to suffer from depression. Many public data have once counted similar data. The Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences also investigated the mental health status of 415 elderly people in Beijing in 2021, finding that 19.05% of the elderly are in a mild depressive state, and 12.17% of the elderly have a moderate to high degree of depressive mood.

But when their parents have psychological problems, many children cannot find out in time.

At the beginning of last year, 35-year-old Yang Kai learned from his mother that his father had not been able to sleep for nearly two months, and even seriously to the point that he couldn't sleep at all throughout the night.

At that time, his father had just finished the tumor resection surgery, and the surgery was very successful. Moreover, it was found to be in the early stage, and the resection was completed only by intervention. But his father did not seem to be relieved.

Moreover, Yang Kai found that his father had become different from before.

Every time he went home, his father was particularly quiet. Originally, when the family had a dinner together, the father who always liked to "make a toast" and "have a drink" now just sat in the corner, listless, and didn't talk or communicate, "It feels like his soul has been taken away." Sometimes he would pace in the living room. When the family asked him what he was thinking about, he repeatedly denied, "I'm not thinking about anything."

His father's physical condition also deteriorated. Problems such as difficulty in defecation, heart pain, and back pain began to appear. He was even taken away by an ambulance twice. He went to the hospital for a series of examinations, but nothing abnormal was found.

In May last year, Yang Kai returned home after a month and found that his father had lost 30 pounds, and even if he took sleeping pills, it was still difficult to fall asleep. He felt that his father's mental state should have a problem, "Maybe he is depressed."

Ouyang Zheng, an associate researcher at the China Research Center for Aging Science, once published an article titled "The Elderly Depression Group Urgently Needs Attention" in 2022, pointing out that "Elderly depression often occurs in the elderly with chronic diseases such as heart disease or cancer. Therefore, elderly depression is often ignored by the elderly and their families."

After being diagnosed with cancer, Yang Kai's father pushed off the work in his hand to recuperate his body. The father, who used to be a technical director, felt that he had lost the ability to make money. And he was always worried, both worried about recurrence and unable to accept the fact that he was not yet 60 years old but got cancer.

His father's condition is getting worse and worse.

Without delay, Yang Kai decided to take his father to the hospital.

Difficult Medical Treatment

Taking parents to the hospital for psychological problems is not an easy thing.

If you search for the two words "parents" and "psychologist" on social media, most of what you can find are stories of parents taking their children to see a psychologist, and some are help-seeking posts like "What should I do if my parents don't want to go to the hospital", with a few sporadic shares of successful cases of taking parents to the hospital.

Because the problem of not being able to sleep has already bothered Yang Kai's father enough, Yang Kai didn't have much trouble persuading him to come to the hospital. But for the vast majority of parents, they simply cannot associate themselves with words like depression, anxiety, and psychological problems, and they cannot accept their children taking them to see a psychologist.

Zheng Lei, a psychiatrist in Guiyang, once shared such a case on Xiaohongshu -

A middle-aged woman went to the hospital for a migraine examination but got no result. The doctor suggested that she go to the psychiatry department for diagnosis, but she refused, "I just have a migraine. Taking some painkillers will be fine! Why should I go to the psychiatry department! I'm not crazy!" In the end, it was only under the persuasion of her daughter, who cried and made a fuss many times, that she was successfully taken to the examination.

How to make parents accept psychological counseling is the first threshold that young people need to cross.

Carol knew from the beginning that her mother would definitely not accept seeing a psychologist, "She will think that I treat her as a patient and that I am not filial for asking her to see a doctor." She thought of a way to persuade her mother to go for psychological counseling. She told her mother that she saw an event promotion online, and for 100 yuan, she could experience a interpersonal relationship adjustment once, "We seem to always be arguing, and it seems that my temper is a bit bad. I always get angry with you. Why don't we take this opportunity for you to accompany me to see what causes my impatience," She attributed the problem to herself, "And you can also listen to what the doctor says to better understand me."

After learning that her mother had depression, Huang Liling also thought about taking her to see a psychological counselor, but the price of three or five hundred yuan per hour made her mother feel that it was too expensive and she didn't want to waste her daughter's money. Huang Liling wanted to take her mother to the hospital for a systematic examination, but her mother was worried about causing trouble for her daughter and always politely refused.

Still from "Hospital Playlist 2"

It wasn't until her mother retired last year that Huang Liling brought her to Guangzhou to play for a while, and then she had the opportunity to take her mother to the hospital.

When choosing a doctor, many children also have difficulties.

When registering, Huang Liling wanted to find a doctor specializing in menopausal depression, but found that no doctor had ever written in their profile that they were "good at menopausal depression." Later, she found a psychiatrist through keyword search who said he was good at women's psychological problems, and then she registered for the psychiatry department of Guangzhou Brain Hospital.

And Yang Kai initially wanted to take his father to Peking University Sixth Hospital (a specialized mental hospital in Beijing) for a face-to-face consultation, but he failed to get an appointment several times. Later, his cousin at home helped him make an appointment with a cardiologist at another tertiary hospital, saying that he was more experienced in treating insomnia.

On the day of going to the hospital, the doctor looked at the sleeping pills Yang Kai's father was taking, but poured cold water on them, "You've taken so many medicines and they haven't worked. I don't have a solution either." He tried to console Yang Kai's father, "Don't be so pessimistic. So many people died in the floods in Zhuozhou. Who did they offend? Your illness is very normal. You can go home and read Mao Zedong's works, print out the words and stick them on the wall, and read them every day."

The treatment ended without a conclusion, and Yang Kai could only take his father home. As a result, a week later, his mother told Yang Kai that his father's condition was even worse, "It seems that he was scolded by the doctor."

And don't expect the "curative effect" brought by a face-to-face consultation from your own perspective.

In mid-January, Carol took her mother to an institution that could provide one-on-two counseling.

She remembered that before the college entrance examination, she had insomnia due to anxiety, and her mother took her to see a psychologist. This made her naturally think that her mother was an open-minded and receptive mother who could listen to others' opinions. But the effect of this consultation was not as she expected.

Because it was one-on-two, Carol and her mother were each allocated half an hour of counseling time.

Carol takes her mother to the consultation room for the first time

During the process, the counselor asked the mother to rate herself, and the mother gave herself a failing grade. She felt that she had a bad relationship with her husband and her children, and she felt like a failure. She also cried a lot.

Later, the counselor asked the mother about her childhood growth environment. The mother said that the education she received since childhood was very strict and traditional, and her growth environment was very superior. But in Carol's opinion, the mother was showing off, "Because of face, she wants outsiders to think that she is very good."

Later, the counselor explained to the two why there were conceptual conflicts between them and persuaded the mother, "When the child grows up, you should let go." "Your child is the most educated person in your family. What reason do you have not to listen to him but to insist on your own opinion?"

After an hour of counseling, Carol felt that she had opened up a perspective and somewhat understood her mother's actions. She thought that at least a crack could be pried open in her mother's closed heart, so she asked her mother, "After this session, do you feel that there is a little bit of new knowledge or a new perspective that is different from what you thought before?"

"This person is talking nonsense!" The mother became excited, "She means that I shouldn't care about you anymore. How could a mother not care about her child?" The more she said, the angrier she became. Carol realized that the first psychological counseling with her mother was a complete failure.

The Determination to Seek Medical Treatment

Taking parents to seek medical treatment definitely requires determination and patience.

In mid-August last year, Yang Kai finally got an appointment at the Sleep Medicine Department of Peking University Sixth Hospital.

On the day of the consultation, as soon as they entered the hospital, a crowded scene came into view. Yang Kai and his father sat at the door of the consultation room. Looking around, there were people of the same age as his father, young people, and children. He persuaded his father, "Look, there are all kinds of people here. It's not just you who has this problem. This kind of thing is very common."

During the face-to-face consultation, the doctor told Yang Kai that his father was not depressed but anxious, and it was a spiral anxiety - anxious because of worrying about recurrence, and anxiety would lead to insomnia, and insomnia would cause harm to the body, and harm to the body would cause liver damage, and liver damage would easily lead to recurrence. The doctor suggested that his father be hospitalized for 2 weeks, "If the sleep can be adjusted, he can gradually recover."

Yang Kai had his father admitted to the sleep ward on the same day, at his own expense, 4,000 yuan per day. "Just think of it as going on a vacation and staying in a luxury hotel." Yang Kai joked with his father, "It's better to be cured once than anything else. Otherwise, it's too painful."