Divorce has a way of stoking stress and uncertainties to the point that many people overlook the most important things in their lives. Critically important Issues related to mental health and wellness can be crowded out by anxiety and depression. However, being aware of and addressing mental health is crucial during these turbulent times.
Duffee + Eitzen co-founder Melinda Eitzen devoted a recent episode of her family law podcast to this important topic. Veteran mental health professionals Barbara Neal and Chad Collom joined Eitzen to share perspectives from careers spent helping individuals and families navigate mental health and wellness and emerge from divorce ready for the next phase of their lives.
Neal is a licensed professional counselor, a marriage and family therapist, and a life coach. Collom is a psychiatric nurse practitioner with a phD in nursing practice and professional experience as an RN. As a psychiatric nurse practitioner, Collom is able to prescribe medication.
The uncertainty and drama that people experience in family law conflicts often aggravate pre-existing conditions like depression, anxiety and attention deficit disorder (ADD). Meanwhile, if those same conditions happen to be undiagnosed, they can develop into real problems during divorce.
“As a divorce lawyer, I see people who are situationally depressed and anxious,” Eitzen said. “Divorce is one of the major life changes, and I always recommend that people participate in counseling and life coaching while they’re going through this. I’m surprised that everyone doesn’t realize they need a tool like this in their tool belt, which for mental wellness might be life coaching, counseling or medication.”
The Mental Health and Wellness Toolkit for Divorce:
- A therapist or life coach can provide valuable perspective and objectivity regarding important decisions, as well as mental health and wellness.
- Cognitive behavioral therapy helps individuals manage problems by changing how they think and respond. Unlike other therapy disciplines that focus on events that occurred in the past, CBT primarily focuses on helping individuals navigate current issues.
- Take stock of psychiatric and non-psychiatric medications currently prescribed to ensure they are appropriate and are being used effectively.
- Consider medication, if necessary. Therapy and counseling alone sometimes are not enough to address the anxiety, depression and other mental health concerns that can be aggravated by divorce. A psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse practitioner can provide short-term medication to address situational challenges or adjust existing prescriptions that may not be working.
As a first step to address situational depression that manifests during divorce, Neal often recommends cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which is a form of therapy that manages problems by examining how an individual thinks and responds to different problems.
“In my experience, a lot of depression that’s situational can be addressed with good therapy,” Neal says. “Being able to process feelings and look at things a little differently — I find the mood can get better without medication.”
Neal and Collom agree that one of the first steps should be to take stock of any medication a person may already be taking. One concern: it’s not uncommon for general practitioner physicians to prescribe medication for mental health issues. As a result, some people are not sure what they’re taking or why it’s been prescribed. In these situations, it’s very important to review medications to ensure they’ve been properly prescribed.
Anxiety, which can cause distracting ruminations and compulsive behavior and can aggravate depression, can be more difficult to treat solely with counseling. In those cases, medication — even in the short term — can be a real help. In addition, it’s important to get a full picture of potentially untreated or undiagnosed conditions like ADD that can at times be confused with anxiety or depression.
“The myth has been that when you turn 18 ADD goes away,” Collom says. “There’s so much evidence-based research that links ADD with high rates of divorce and substance abuse, job loss — all of that. It can be a massive impairment into adulthood.”
About Duffee + Eitzen
Our North Texas divorce law firm represents clients facing high-stakes divorce and custody matters and family law disputes with complex business and economic components.