Breaking through: How to overcome housewives' depression

193 Breaking Through: How to Overcome Housewives’ Depression Marie Morgan, Winston Press, Minneapolis, 1983 The subtitle of this book is synoptic of its content. The author, a pastor, journalist, and founder of depression self-help groups, has drawn upon her own experience with symptoms of common, garden-variety, mild depression, and on her professional research into theories of its cause and treatment. The book is written for the still numerous, though dwindling, population of full-time homemakers, women at stages in which lack of stimulation and a sense of helplessness, hopelessness, and purposelessness frequently occur. Dr. Morgan identifies these stages as: (1) when a woman finds herself at home with one or more small children and their round-the-clock demands; (2) when her last child has gone off to first grade, leaving her with an empty, quiet house and a bewildering disappointment with “all the time to herself” that she originally anticipated; and (3) when she finds herself nearly out of a job as the need for her mothering services winds down, with her youngest child finishing high school, presumably soon to leave home. Having described the problem and the susceptible population, the author then lays out a systematic strategy by which women can treat their own depression and be mutually supportive of others who are working their way through the same process. Each chapter explicates in easily understandable terms theories of biological and psychological etiologies of depression and (in the

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author’s own term) a “smorgasbord” of solutions, from time management through assertiveness techniques and cognitive therapy to biochemical intervention. There are structured assignments, and a reading list at the end of each chapter including a wealth of familiar and less known works, both recent and popular (such as Jackie Sorensen’s Aerobic Dancing) and classic and philosophical (such as Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning). Breaking

Through is a readable guide for taking charge of one’s life and alleviating the mild but chronic “housewives’ depression” the author describes. It is certainly of value as a primary tool and program structure for a facilitator of the peer support groups Dr. Morgan has initiated herself. While it is likely that an organized, outgoing, confident homemaker with no previous group leadership experience could start a self-help group, as the author advocates in the final section of the book, I suspect that would be a hard task for the isolated, tied-down women suffering from the symptoms of “housewives’ depression. ” Despite this, I believe the book can be of benefit to that half of American women not working outside their homes, whose stresses seem at present to be less addressed than those of the more visible, perhaps more vocal, working wives and mothers.

Patricia C. Eakle, M.S.W., A.C.S.W. Social Work Department U.S. Naval Hospital Bethesda, Maryland