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Coco Gauff Opens Up About How Her Fast Rise to Tennis Fame Led to Depression


Tennis star Coco Gauff just turned 16 last month, but she’s already become a household name in the world of sports and beyond thanks to her upset of Venus Williams, and a deep run into the 4th round, at Wimbledon in 2019. The boost in her profile also made her a must-watch at last year’s US Open where she eventually lost to another young tennis phenom, Naomi Osaka.

The pressure of the sport and the spotlight can be intense even for a grownup, but imagine all of that attention coming to you when you’re barely old enough to drive. Gauff recently opened up about just how difficult it’s been for her in an emotionally candid new post on Behind the Racquet, a platform that allows players to tell their stories in their own words.

“Right before Wimbledon, going back to around 2017/18, I was struggling to figure out if this was really what I wanted. I always had the results so that wasn’t the issue, I just found myself not enjoying what I loved. I realized I needed to start playing for myself and not other people. For about a year I was really depressed,” she writes. “That was the toughest year for me so far. Even though I had, it felt like there weren’t many friends there for me. When you are in that dark mindset you don’t look on the bright side of things too often, which is the hardest part. I don’t think it had much to do with tennis, maybe just about juggling it all. I knew that I wanted to play tennis but didn’t know how I wanted to go about it. It went so far that I was thinking about possibly taking a year off to just focus on life. Choosing not to obviously was the right choice but I was close to not going in that direction.”

“I was just lost. I was confused and overthinking if this was what I wanted or what others did,” she continued. “It took many moments sitting, thinking and crying. I came out of it stronger and knowing myself better than ever. Everyone asks me how I stay calm on court and I think it’s because I accepted who I am after overcoming low points in my life. Now, when I’m on court, I am just really thankful to be out there.”

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13 Best Meditation Apps for Anxiety, Depression, and Worry


Cost: $12.99/month or $69.99/year (they also offer a free trial)

Calm is the #2 best-reviewed app in the entire health and fitness category in the iPhone app store. A subscription includes a seemingly endless number of meditations, “sleep stories” (bedtime stories for grown ups,) and nature sounds. “My anxiety often hits at night and the sleep stories are reliably relaxing,” says Glamour senior wellness editor Macaela MacKenzie.

Calm has even been the subject of a clinical study of college students who used the app over eight weeks—the study found that perceived stress was lower in the group that used Calm than the group that did not.

The graphics on Calm are different than the cartoon illustrations on Headspace—more realistic and, depending on your taste, more calming. The meditations are in just one speaker’s voice, a woman with an American accent.

Cost: $69.99/year (which is $5.83/month.) The basic version also has some free content.

Oak has, in its relaxing, water color-ish way, the qualities of a good addictive cell phone game. You can earn badges by doing meditations, and receive daily inspirational quotes. The free version comes with simple breathing exercises, sleep sounds and sleep breathing meditations, and basic, daily meditations that function, pleasantly, like a Chipotle—you customize your meditation by topic (mindful or loving kindness,) time (5-30 minutes,) speaker (male or female,) and background sound (Cave water! Fireplace! Tibetan om! Wood sauna!)

__Cost:__Free, or $5.99 to take an in-app course.

Liberate is a meditation app designed specifically for people of color. It includes carefully curated meditations on concepts like micro aggressions as well as talks about self-love designed for a population that endures racism and discrimination. “The app design is minimal and easy to navigate,” says Lauren Brown, senior visuals editor at Glamour. “They have 20-30 minute sessions for beginners, like me. I’ve used it a few times and found it helpful.”

Cost: Free

Insight Timer bills itself as “the largest meditation community on earth,” and claims that over tens of millions of people use it daily. Part of that success is likely because of its robust free version, which has 35,000 meditations. The premium version has meditation classes, plus shares income with its meditation teachers.

The app offers simple silent meditations, a variety of teachers, and a function that allows you to search meditations by duration. The design is a little Word Press-y, but it’s user friendly and offers a huge diversity of meditations, even in the free version.

Cost:$9.99/month or $59.99/year (that’s $4.99/month.) Or the free version has plenty.

This app looks a little bit corporate, but it’s steady and straightforward—its goal is to get you into a true daily habit of meditation.
Though it still has fun perks—in every meditation session, you can opt to add background sounds, like rain, or beach sounds.

The shortest meditations are under three minutes long, the longest are over 30. The vast majority of the themed meditations (in categories like body, emotion, and relationships) are only available in the premium version, but the free app has a nice function that allows users to essentially design their own meditation, picking the duration, the background noises, and whether it is silent or guided.

Cost:$9.99/month, $59.99/year (that’s $4.99/month,) or $299/life. Or the free version is decent.

Buddhify, a membership-based program, has some of the most pleasant graphics and design of any of these apps. Among the regular soothing offerings, membership includes what the app makers describe as a “karaoke-style feature” which allows users to lead others in guided meditations by reading along with prompts on the app.



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Postpartum Depression Treatment Made Me Feel Helpless—Women Deserve Better Options


When my son was born nine months ago, I was—like most new moms—a puddle of emotions. I was so eager to see my baby after giving birth, I tried to walk to the recovery room before my epidural had fully worn off. Spoiler alert: I collapsed on the tiled floor. But even on the ground, I was ecstatic. After hours of labor, I had emerged victorious. It felt like my greatest accomplishment.

But the new-mom high was short lived. My first attempts at breastfeeding were not so glorious, and when the unfriendly nurse on duty tried to “help” by grabbing my breast and shoving it into my son’s mouth, I started crying.

I didn’t really stop for the next two months.

I’ve struggled with depression my entire adult life, so I braced myself for the possibility of postpartum depression from the beginning. Most women experience the “baby blues” after delivery—mood swings, irritability, anxiety, sadness, and feeling overwhelmed—a therapist specializing in maternal mental health told me while I was pregnant, but if the blues lasted more than two weeks, it might be postpartum depression. I took note.

I made a mental health protection plan, monitoring my moods carefully, meditating frequently, and exercising regularly during pregnancy. Going into labor, I felt great.

After a smooth delivery and a standard 48-hour stay, we were discharged from the hospital. But I already knew in my gut that I wasn’t ready. As we were wheeling out to the parking lot, the scorching Miami sun suddenly felt unforgiving; tiny beads of sweat appeared on my nose, the humidity fogging my glasses. I held my baby, wrapped up in his layette set, to my chest. I was scared to put him in the car seat, so afraid that I’d break him. On the way home, I clutched his carseat on the verge of a panic attack, terrified we’d get into an accident.

The panic didn’t subside for months. Like all new parents, we documented all of the exciting firsts with our son—his first feeding, his first bath, his first diaper change. Often in these photos, I’m posing and smiling like I should be, but if you look closely, my eyes are pink and puffy and a stream of tears stains my cheeks. I really wanted to be present, but I felt myself starting to get lost.

Days of depression turned into weeks and then months. I felt as if someone had stuck a syringe into my enthusiasm to be a parent and sucked out every milliliter of joy and excitement until there was nothing left. I was empty.

My husband, being the supportive partner that he is, took on a large portion of the infant care and house work while I tried to tolerate just existing—a gargantuan task. Sometimes I lay in bed with an eye mask and headphones. Other times I would close the door, shut the lights off, and sit on the floor staring at a blank wall. I read articles about postpartum depression that left me feeling even more hopeless. I shut off communications with the outside world.

I became lost in the delusion that I was so incompetent as a mother that I was just getting in the way. I thought my family would be better off without me. I fantasized about packing a bag and flying to a far city and never coming back; I could send my family letters and maybe visit during the holidays. I needed to escape. I couldn’t tolerate what I was doing to my family. I couldn’t be the mom I had imagined myself being during the pregnancy. I felt like a failure. The negative thoughts became more insidious and blared on repeat in my mind, muting out any hope or happiness I had ever felt in the past.



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The New Postpartum Depression Drug Zulresso Comes With a Catch


When you’re pregnant, the promise is that motherhood will make you the happiest person on earth. That’s a far cry from reality for many women, but for the one in seven dealing with postpartum depression, the new-mother whiplash is much more severe. For these women, options are scarce. “Postpartum depression has been neglected—it’s been underdiagnosed and undertreated,” says Samantha Meltzer-Brody, M.D., director of the perinatal psychiatry program at the UNC Center for Women’s Mood Disorders. “So many women suffer. Screening is spotty, treatment is spotty, and it’s one of the greatest causes of maternal mortality.” So it’s groundbreaking news that this week the FDA officially approved the first postpartum-depression drug therapy.

The approval is a true game changer. Currently available treatments for postpartum depression, usually prescription antidepressants, can take anywhere from four to six weeks to start working. That may seem like a lifetime for a new mom suffering with severe symptoms. The new drug brexanolone, which will be sold under the name Zulresso by Sage Pharmaceuticals, starts working almost immediately. In clinical trials of women with moderate to severe postpartum depression, most women saw improvements within the first day, says Dr. Meltzer-Brody, the principal investigator for the trials. And women still felt relief 30 days after just one treatment.

So how does it work? “What’s really exciting in terms of postpartum depression is that this is a hormone-based therapy,” Dr. Meltzer-Brody says. Zulresso is a synthetic form of allopregnanolone, which the body makes as it breaks down the fertility hormone progesterone. During pregnancy, levels of progesterone reach all-time highs, but after giving birth, levels of the hormone drop quickly, which researchers think could be tied to postpartum depression. Zulresso is administered via an IV.

That’s where things get a bit trickier. The IV infusion lasts 60 hours, and women have to be monitored closely while the drug is being administered. That means for women to receive the treatment, they’ll have to check in to a certified medical center for two and a half days, a big chunk of time during those early days when a mother is still bonding with her newborn, or perhaps already back at work and juggling many demands on her time. But Dr. Meltzer-Brody says that women in the trial found those hours spent in the clinic to be a “minor inconvenience” compared with the precious weeks they’d otherwise have to wait for more traditional antidepressants to kick in. “For women who are depressed, who are not able to return to work, who are not able to care for their baby—there are so many economic burdens and impacts of untreated depression that you have to weigh,” she says.

The treatment, which Sage estimates will be available in June, doesn’t come cheap—the average cost per patient is $34,000, not including the stay at the clinic, according to The New York Times. Insurance coverage, which is currently being negotiated, will be vital to making sure women have access to Zulresso. “Our philosophy has really been about making sure there’s going to be access for patients,” says Mike Cloonan, Sage Pharmaceutical’s chief business officer. He says the company has been talking to more than 500 insurance providers for more than a year, raising awareness of postpartum depression and the issues facing women. “We feel very confident that we are going to have access for patients based on the feedback that we’ve received,” he says. Sage is also pledging to roll out a suite of tools to help patients navigate insurance, financial assistance, and where to go for the 60-hour infusions. “We’re trying to surround the patient with the support they’ll need throughout this process,” Cloonan says.



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Lili Reinhart Opens Up About Her Battle With Anxiety and Depression


Lili Reinhart continues to speak out about mental health—and on Friday, February 15, she got even more personal as a way to encourage others to seek help when they need it. The Riverdale star opened up about her battle with anxiety and depression, sharing on a series of honest and open Instagram Stories that she’s re-entering therapy.

“Friendly reminder for anyone who needs to hear it: Therapy is never something to feel ashamed of,” Reinhart wrote in a series of Stories. “Everyone can benefit from seeing a therapist. Doesn’t matter how old or ‘proud’ you’re trying to be.”

Instagram Stories/@lilireinhart
A blackandwhite Instagram Story reading Therapy is never something to feel ashamed of. Everyone can benefit from seeing...
Instagram Stories/@lilireinhart

“We are all human. And we all struggle,” she added in a next series of posts. “Don’t suffer in silence. Don’t be embarrassed to ask for help.”

A blackandwhite Instagram Story reading We are all human. And we all struggle. Don't suffer in silence. Don't be...
Instagram Stories/@lilireinhart

“I’m 22. I have anxiety and depression,” the actress continued. “And today I started therapy again.”

A blackandwhite Instagram Story reading I'm 22. I have anxiety and depression. And today I started therapy again. And so...
Instagram Stories/@lilireinhart

“And so the journey of self-love begins for me,” Reinhart wrote next, wrapping up the series. “Good luck to you on yours.”

A blackandwhite Instagram Story reading And so the journey of selflove begins for me.
Instagram Stories/@lilireinhart
A blackandwhite Instagram Story reading Good luck to you on yours.
Instagram Stories/@lilireinhart

This isn’t the first time the actress has spoken about her struggle with mental health. In December, she announced she’d be taking a break from Twitter to get away from all the negativity. “Taking a break from that toxic site and the people on it who feel the need to attack me, my cast mates, my relationship, and Riverdale,” she wrote at the time.

Since then, she’s made her return to the social-media platform but hasn’t been as active—though a post or two about boyfriend Cole Sprouse have definitely snuck in her feed.

In the past, Reinhart has also been very open about other personal insecurities, including her struggles with body image and acne. “Sometimes I feel like I look like shit. Sometimes I don’t want to talk to anyone. And I’m allowed to have those days,” she told Glamour in November. “I’m not going to apologize for that.”





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Stay-at-Home Mom Depression Is Real—and Women Are Finally Talking About It


Last week, an article on Today.com elicited a collective “THIS” from women across the web thanks to its frank take on an under-discussed but very real mental health challenge: stay-at-home mom depression. The essay—written by Megan Powell, the 32-year-old mother of five behind blog Momma’s Tired—nailed the day-to-day reality for many SAHMs: balancing the vast task of raising children and running a household while simultaneously fending off comments about how it must be so nice and relaxing to not have to go to work.

As a stay-at-home mom for 10 years and counting, I too felt a surge of vindication reading Powell’s essay. Not going to a traditional job every day in favor of full-time parenting is no walk in the park (as any mother or father who’s ever stayed home with the kids even for a day can imagine). Anyone willing to stand up and say that deserves a standing ovation from the one in five U.S. parents who stay home full-time (and, lets be honest, from the everyone else, too). But for some women, there exists a deeper sense of distress that can plague those whose daily routines revolve solely around the kids. “It’s like cabin fever after a few days, except it’s your life every day,” says Danielle Moeslein, a 30-year-old stay-at-home mom in Missouri.

Powell’s essay put a name to that panicky, helpless feeling that sets in when you start to believe that you exist only to help others exist. Or feel like you might want to be doing something more but can’t talk about it because you’re “lucky” to have the option of not working. Or when every small thing in your life feels like a struggle—from brushing your teeth (see: toddler climbing up your leg), to trying to cook a meal for yourself (oh wait, the baby is hungry right now and feeding her is more important), to even getting dressed (why bother?).

Just like postpartum depression may be triggered by external factors—a major life change, a shift in hormones—stay-at-home mom depression is often the result of big, often stressful changes in your life. “Stress exacerbates any condition, mental health or otherwise,” says Melinda Paige, PhD, a professor of clinical mental health counseling at Argosy University in Atlanta. And stay-at-home mom life is rife with triggers. Isolation, loss of purpose or identity and lack of social interaction can all play a role in the development of depression.

In other words, being home alone with demanding young children for what seems like an eternity may not always be the most ideal situation for prime mental health.

Despite all the strides we’ve made in talking about mental health, depression is still stigmatized as a personal failure. That pressure feels particularly frustrating for a lot of stay-at-home moms, myself included, who fall into the roles less by choice and more by circumstance. Moeslein, for instance, tells Glamour that she never planned to stay home, but after her son was born with medical complications as a result of a bladder condition, sending him to daycare wasn’t an option. She had no idea what she was getting into, but she didn’t have any other choice.

During her seven years as a SAHM, the mother of three struggles on and off with the same depression that plagued her in college. “As a mom, especially as a mom who stays at home and suffers from depression, you just don’t have that time to take care of yourself because you’re so busy taking care of your family,” she says. “You do it because you don’t have a choice.”

“I told myself that so many other women would kill to be home with their kids all day, so I bottled up my feelings in fear of seeming ungrateful.”

Even for women who never suffered from depression, the transition to at-home parent may be especially hard for mothers who had careers before having children. The loss of the identity and self-worth a woman’s career provided to her is a form of loss, which is a trigger, says Susan Silver, a psychotherapist in Illinois. “When we think about loss, we usually think about death or divorce, but any major change can be a source of depression.”

Complicating matters is the fact that depression is often overlooked among SAHMs because not going to work every day is viewed as a privileged choice. It’s lucky. That often means moms who struggle may feel like they don’t have the right to speak out. “I told myself that so many other women would kill to be home with their kids all day, so I bottled up my feelings for fear of seeming ungrateful,” says Pamela Gillett, 30, a former stay-at-home mom of two from Michigan, who went back to part-time to cope.

Compounding the pressure that many at-home moms put on themselves to not feel ungrateful is the message that if you’re at home and unhappy, you have only yourself to blame. Common advice given to at-home moms—get up early so you can have “me” time or exercise at home—send the message that if you only worked a little harder, you wouldn’t be so miserable.

“Women often don’t feel they deserve [help]. Or they think something is wrong with them and that they’ve failed in some way if they have to go to somebody else for help.”

At the height of some of my own depressive episodes as a SAHM, I can remember crying while pushing my daughter outside in her little baby swing, telling myself over and over that I should be happy just to be with her, or crying when, yet again, that I had to drag four little kids with me to get my teeth cleaned because finding a reliable sitter is not as easy as all of those “helpful” articles make it out to be. Not being able to voice my own misery or find the help that I knew I needed only served to make me feel like even more of a failure as a mom.

The reality is, the very structure of stay-at-home mothering can make a woman prone to depression even more susceptible. “As a person, you need conversation, you need human interaction, you need stimuli that as a SAHM you don’t get on a daily basis,” Moeslein says. “That’s something nobody talked to me about before I had kids.” Modern family dynamics are getting worse at supporting this, Silver says—extended family members like cousins are less likely to live nearby and grandparents are more likely to be working and living their own active lives. Those key forms of social communities once available to SAHMs aren’t always there anymore. The systemic struggles that SAHMs face are also a very real part of the problem—from the way we treat mothers postpartum (spend 15 minutes with a doctor checking in on your health after giving birth and hope that covers it!), to the lack of paid maternity leave. The message to moms is clear: you’re on your own, lady.

Over a quarter of all mothers in the U.S. don’t work outside the home, according to recent survey data—why has it taken so long to to acknowledge the mental health challenges we’re faced with?

Putting a name to the phenomenon of stay-at-home mom depression helps legitimize it. It’s a rallying cry for any mom who has ever felt this way. For 10 years, I have believed that I am just not “good” at being a SAHM. I’ve told myself, over and over, that while staying home may not be the best thing for me, it’s the best thing for our family right now—so I’d better learn to deal with it. I’ve convinced myself that all the other at-home moms out there are waking up excited about yet another day at home with kids, while I sometimes wake up wanting to cry.

I’m certainly not alone in this. “I always thought I was just having a bad day,” says Kara Collins, 31, a mom of four boys in Maryland. She’s tried medications and communicating more openly with her husband about her struggles but still feels like she’s living in “survival mode.” The term “stat-at-home mom depression” was new to her, but putting a name to the feelings she’s struggling with has helped her feel like she can start to move forward and face them. “I need to find my identity outside of motherhood,” Collins says. “I’m hoping to start a school program which I think will help me dig myself out of this darkness.”

Like Collins, most moms—working or not—are generally aware of what they should do to get the help they need, like talk to their doctor, socialize with other adults, and find interests that fulfill them. But whether they have the energy or ability to actually do those things is another story. “Women often don’t feel they deserve [help], or they think something is wrong with them and that they’ve failed in some way if they have to go to somebody else for help,” Silver says. But by being more open about how it is possible to struggle with stay-at-home depression and love your kids more than life itself, hopefully women and healthcare providers will be able to bridge the gap to help stay-at-home mothers feel more acknowledged and cared for in the future.

Simply hearing the term “stay-at-home mom depression” has helped me validate how I’ve felt over the past decade. It’s not me that’s the problem. Or my kids. Or even my partner not understanding. The truth is, there is a very real lack of knowledge about the realities of women staying home—especially those women who may already be prone to depression. For those of us in the trenches, we can help by being more honest about our own experiences, modeling truths for future generations of mothers, and being kind to ourselves as we figure out how make staying at home work better for everyone.

Photo: Getty Images



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