Case No. 01. An American Indian woman suffering from depression, alcoholism and childhood trauma
- Book ID
- 104626491
- Publisher
- Springer US
- Year
- 1996
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 553 KB
- Volume
- 20
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0165-005X
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Patient identification. M. is a 24-year-old American Indian married woman, the mother of two daughters, ages 5 and 7, by a previous marriage. M. and her family live on a reservation in Washington State. She presented to the tribal mental health clinic with symptoms of depression.
History ofpresent illness. Over a year before her presentation, M.'s paternal grandmother died. Although M. had been sober and drug free for three years, she relapsed nine months after her grandmother's death. She thought she could be a "social drinker" and have just one beer, but she ended up having several, drinking to intoxication. An AA friend suggested that M. needed help with the loss and invited her to a bereavement support group at the community mental health center. M. attended four sessions and then stopped because she felt that she experienced her loss very differently from the non-Indian group members: no one else spoke of seeing the deceased after the funeral like M. had. She felt she could not share how she occasionally still heard her grandmother's voice "speaking Indian" to her.
Worried that her grieving was not proper, M. sought out the counsel of a tribal elder woman, named S., who told her that other tribal people sometimes had similar experiences after losing a loved one. M. was instructed on how she could actively help the family prepare the memorial dinner for her grandmother. The dinner and accompanying ceremonies marked the end of the bereavement period, and S. assured M. that the prayers would be strong and would result in putting away her grief "in a good way." S., who was a cultural consultant to the tribal health and human services department, also sensed that there were more issues contributing to M.'s distress and suggested that M. make an appointment with an intake worker. After the memorial dinner M. felt much less sad and had more energy, but four months later, her mood became depressed and she presented herself at the tribal mental health clinic.