Giving Voice to Depression: Real Stories & Expert Support for Depression and Mental Health
Giving Voice To Depression unites lived experience and expert insight to shine a spotlight on depression and mental health. Each week, we bring you honest personal stories, evidence-based strategies, and compassionate conversations to help you understand, cope with, and recover from depression. Whether you’re navigating your own journey, supporting a loved one, or simply seeking to better understand mental-health challenges, this podcast offers real voices, trusted guidance, and a path toward hope. Subscribe now for new episodes every week and join a community where depression isn’t silenced—it’s voiced, understood and overcome.
Giving Voice to Depression: Real Stories & Expert Support for Depression and Mental Health
Parenting With Depression: Why Getting Mental Health Help Is Part of Caring for Your Kids
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What does it mean to parent while living with depression and anxiety? In this episode of Giving Voice to Depression, Laura, a mother of two, shares her long mental health journey and the hard-won lesson that getting help is not a departure from parenting. It can be part of caring for the people you love.
Laura talks about perfectionism, trying to keep every part of family life running, and what happened when the pressure became too much. After a severe panic attack and a major depressive episode, she entered intensive outpatient treatment. She also describes the difficult feelings that came with accepting care, including the fear that she was not struggling enough to deserve it.
Terry McGuire and Carly McCollow explore how parents can use honest, age-appropriate language with children, why children often sense when adults are overwhelmed, and how modeling rest, support, and healthy choices can matter across generations. This conversation offers compassion and practical hope for parents, caregivers, and anyone trying to care for others while struggling themselves.
Primary topics
- Parenting with depression and anxiety
- The pressure to be a perfect parent
- Recognizing when symptoms are becoming overwhelming
- Panic attacks and seeking urgent care
- Suicidal thoughts and telling a therapist
- Intensive outpatient mental health treatment
- How treatment can support a family
- Talking to children about a parent’s hard day
- Modeling rest, boundaries, and help-seeking
Timestamps
00:04 Welcome to Giving Voice to Depression
01:21 Parenting, caregiving, and getting the care you need
02:03 Laura’s early anxiety and depression
02:47 Teen mental health treatment and partial hospitalization
04:32 Depression after the birth of her second child
05:56 Trying to hold work, home, and parenting together
06:45 Perfectionism and the pressure to be the best mom
07:46 Panic attacks and going to the hospital
09:25 A major depressive episode and intensive outpatient treatment
11:06 Feeling undeserving of help
12:36 Suicidal thoughts and sharing them in therapy
13:18 Learning to challenge black-and-white thinking
14:20 Why taking care of yourself helps your family
16:31 Modeling care and receiving care for children
20:12 Being human on good days and hard days
21:22 Giving children language for a parent’s struggle
22:29 Reassuring children that a parent’s depression is not their fault
23:27 Closing resources and encouragement
Explore mental health and addiction treatment options at recovery.com
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