[jrobert890]

I need to get my wife diagnosed. How do I get her to a Psychiatrist? When I've tried to discuss the possibility of ADD or ADHD, she gets extremely angry and defensive. In fact she get angry with most things we try to discuss lately. She has so many things that are piling up and she just continues to run rather than take care of her stuff. I'm also concerned that she will pass this behavior on to our toddler. Is that possible? I really need some help here.

[Queen of Chaos]

You've mentioned a toddler - if your wife's behavior seems to have changed since the birth of your child, you may very well be looking at something other than ADD/ADHD. Pregnancy and childbirth always come with extreme hormonal fluctuations, sometimes they go away by themselves, sometimes they don't. Your wife may be suffering from a specific form of depression and it very well can get worse without professional help.

She may, through absolutely no fault of her own, be dealing with emotional, physical and mental issues she doesn't understand and that frustration on top of the demands of being a mother are difficult at best and could possibly be dangerous at worst.

If she is hesitant to see a psychiatrist, please encourage her (or better yet, take her) to talk to her primary care physician or her obstetrician.

Back to the possibility of ADD/ADHD. I get the impression (the word "lately") the problems you're seeing are new. I think, based on my own personal experiences, you'd have suspected ADD/ADHD all along if that's the explanation for her behavior. Possibly she has previously been undiagnosed with attention symptoms that have been made worse by recent hormonal changes, scheduling demands, more things to be responsible for, etc.

Whatever is happening, it sounds like she is overwhelmed and she needs help. As an adult with ADD, I can absolutely understand denial, not wanting to or knowing how to manage a growing variety of demands and "stuff".

Your wife, like most wives and mothers, may be hesitant to see a psychiatrist because she fears what the cost will be and/or she lacks confidence that a psychiatrist can help her. My recommendation is to begin with the doctors she is familiar with and go from there. If you're looking at postpartum depression, the answer might be easier to diagnose and treat than you'd expect.

Depression and ADD/ADHD go hand in hand - sometimes depression is depression, it has nothing to do with ADD. ADD/ADHD, undiagnosed, is probably always going to cause depression-type symptoms. Your wife is lucky you see what appears to be something not right and you obviously want to help her. I don't know what else to recommend other than the first place I'd start would be to approach this issue as lovingly as possible, the worst part about so much of this is the person may or may not realize something isn't right, but try to be as genuinely compassionate as possible and as helpful as possible.

As far as your child picking-up on any unusual behavior - I don't know the answer to that question. Children are ALWAYS going to absorb everything going on around them but whether or not your wife's behavior is that noticeable to this little child would be hard to know. Your child will pick-up on stress, tension, his mother's (or father's) anxiety or sadness, etc.

I have relatives who have been diagnosed with ADHD, my brother was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, but I've never seen anything in the personalities of my parents that would make me think it is a learned behavior but I honestly don't know how much environment causes attention problems.

Good luck. Please keep us updated. I'm interested and hope things improve. As a child I was somewhat diagnosed but never treated for ADD until I was an adult. My mother wouldn't hear of seeing a psychiatrist, she was convinced only crazy people saw psychiatrists but that was foolish and ultimately caused so much grief that could have been prevented. My guess is more people than not have mental health issues they'd like to discuss with a professional but they fear a stigma that is absolutely not there - seeing a psychiatrist is nothing to be ashamed about nor fearful about.