Although the internet has been in an uproar for the past few weeks due to the controversial episodes Barzakhthe show has left me in pieces for completely unrelated and unexpected reasons.
Before Zindagi decided to remove the series from Pakistan YouTube, my editor and I were planning a story around the show’s themes of mental illness and intergenerational trauma. But then, episode four let loose with possibly the most accurate, honest and visceral portrayal of postpartum depression in South Asian cinema.
Barzakh brings the struggle with postpartum depression to life
The episode begins with Shehryar’s (Fawad Khan) wife Leena (Eman Suleman) struggling with a breast milk pump. Shehryar tells her, “Let’s bite the bullet and go for formula.
We then see Leena in the bathroom swallowing a large pill and then dunking her face in a sink full of water to muffle her screams.
In the next scene, the couple are sitting on opposite sides of the sofa, their heads in their hands, a sign of new parenthood with exhaustion and sleeplessness on their faces. Their silence is broken by their screaming baby, Haaris. Leena goes to calm Haaris down, but the only words that come out of her mouth are a muffled string of “shut up, shut up, shut up.” Shehryar rushes in to take the baby away from her.
Some time passes. Haaris is bigger and more needed now. Leena, with an undone face and unkempt hair, has faded into motherhood. We watch her struggle to feed a still-screaming Haaris while watching clips from her old life as a stand-up comedian. Haaris cartridges vomit all over the face.
We then see Leena whisper goodbye to her boy, swallow all the pills and sink into the bathtub. Haaris, blissfully unaware as only a child can be, boos and watches the TV outside as his mother sinks to her death.
Maternal mental health: slow resolution
When a new mother struggles with depression and finally succumbs to it, her death is not immediate. It is possible to dissolve, the death of several things occurring one after the other.
I know this because five years ago I became suicidal and was diagnosed with postpartum depression – which refers to postpartum depression.
Since my diagnosis, I have researched and written extensively about postpartum depression. Through my research, I have found more questions than answers – for example, why is this completely preventable and treatable medical condition still taking the lives of young mothers? However, one thing I know for sure is that women like Leena don’t just wake up one day and decide to kill themselves. They disappear. They become victims of biology and society.
I was six weeks into my pregnancy when, seemingly out of the blue (but really, due to the ravages of hormones on a woman’s body during the first trimester), I developed extreme pregnancy depression, something I had never heard of. until I was diagnosed, and an overwhelming desire to end my life.
It felt like a switch had been turned off in my head. Overnight, I went from feeling the tension of pregnancy to crying in the shower, thinking it would be easier on everyone if I died.
My husband is a doctor, which means I was lucky to have a medical professional hovering around my home who was quick to notice that I was entering a dangerous headspace. Within hours my mother had moved in with us and I was booked into an obstetrician and gynecologist who referred me to a psychiatrist.
The first psychiatrist I went to was a middle aged desi woman. She asked me why I was unhappy. I told her I was there because I had been wondering the same thing. She told me that what I was feeling was not normal and that women are usually ecstatic during pregnancy.
I left the clinic crying.
The second psychiatrist I saw was trained in maternal health, specifically postpartum depression. She led me off the mental cliff I had been teetering on. She told me that she personally knew women who had suffered from severe anxiety and depression during and after pregnancy. These women, like me, had considered suicide. And these women were now healthy with healthy children.
Not just baby blues
An overwhelming 80 percent of women will experience the “baby blues,” which is when new moms feel sad or moody in the first week or two after giving birth. This usually resolves on its own. However, postpartum depression is an absolute medical emergency.
Symptoms vary greatly from excessive tears, worry and anxiety to an inability to care for oneself and the child, as well as pathological thoughts, including wanting to harm oneself or the child.
Dr Sue Varma, psychiatrist and author Practical optimismtells me she often hears female family members of depressed mothers say difficult things like, “What’s her problem? I never got help with the baby and I had even more on my plate.”
These statements are not only unhelpful but extremely harmful because the new mother is already filled with guilt over how out of control she feels and because she is just trying to stay afloat.
Depressed mothers: more common than you think
A 2018 Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study estimates that 1 in 8 women experienced postpartum depression symptoms, and according to the Pew Research Center, from 2008 to 2019, about 1 in 11 women aged 15-44 died of suicide. pregnant or had recently given birth.
These figures are for US women. I found nothing comparable for Pakistani women except for three articles. One article, written more than a decade ago, was aptly titled: “Patients Depression in Pakistan: A Neglected Issue” and linked rates of postpartum depression in Pakistani women to 28-63 percent – the highest in Asia. The second article, published in 2017, cited the same percentage and described postpartum depression as one of the most common “complications” of pregnancy. The third article concludes that in the UK, postpartum depression is more common among British South Asian women than white women.
Poor maternal mental health is not just a problem of maternal depression. It has ramifications for the entire family, so spouses and even elders in a new mother’s life would do well to pay attention.
“In severe cases, [perinatal depression] will threaten not only the mother but the life of the child. It can also threaten the child’s social, cognitive, emotional and intellectual development. And that affects the other parent. But when treated, it can create a 180 degree change where the whole family thrives,” said Dr Varma.
According to Dr Varma, “Before us, each generation of brown people had prioritized the happiness of the entire tribe before themselves. But the younger generation is more open to treatment and medicine and the importance of health on an individual level.”
In my case, focusing on myself is what ultimately saved my life and my daughter’s.
Weekly therapy during and after pregnancy, lots of support from my loved ones, daily mental health walks and daily anti-depressants not only got me through my first pregnancy but gave me the courage to consider another pregnancy.
My girls are four and two now and I am currently trying to wean myself off the antidepressants that gave me the mental strength to bring them both into this world.
Depressed mothers on TV
In the West, the topic of maternal mental health has taken off thanks to celebrity mothers such as Kylie Jenner, Adele, Chrissy Teigen and Shay Mitchell speaking publicly about their struggles.
However, in Pakistan, the medical community and media lag behind, and acknowledging ambivalence or grappling with motherhood is very recent in our societies and this is reflected on our television screens.
In Pakistani cinema I just remember that Share, Dil Na Umeed To Nahiand अधारी glazing over mother’s mental health. In Indian cinema, Chhapak and Palm tree and Sam Chatterjee’s short film Cul-de-Sac described depressed mothers.
As someone who has been through the dark and back—and felt the ultimate shame of not having a “normal” pregnancy experience—I cannot underestimate the social value of pop culture images of mothers and mothers-to-be struggling with anxiety and depression. .
In a recent interview, Sarwat Gillani described how she fell into the abyss of postpartum depression. And now we have Asim Abbasi’s powerfully executed fourth installment of Barzakhwhich uses a brutally honest portrayal of postpartum depression as a plot point to propel its larger narrative.
If you are reading this, chances are you have been or know someone who is at risk of experiencing what Leena has Barzakh feels I’m living proof here to tell you: you don’t have to fight alone.
In fact, you don’t have to fight at all. Postpartum depression is totally treatable and doesn’t have to be a permanent condition of your existence. With the right village, you can get better. In fact, you deserve to get better so that you can be there not just to raise, but actually enjoy watching your child grow.
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