Post Natal Depression?

I am trying to get some advice regarding my wife.

She is mid 30's, and has had 2 babies in 3 years, They second one is 8 months old and my wife recently returned to work.

My wife is under massive stress at work, due to restructuring of the bank where she works, and her workload is outrageous, and will be for months to come.

She has to move all her clients from one part of the bank (that is closing) to another.

The paperwork is horrendous.

We have help with the children, and I work from home, so childcare (in evenings and weekends) is a stress for my wife, but not too bad.

Anyway, I have noticed that since she returned to work her personality seems to be changing.

She is hyper emotional and irrational, which is not her usual personality at all.

Even if I do her a favour, she finds a way to be very nasty and spiteful and disrespectful. Her personality has totally changed in recent months - she has become really bitter about general things which never bothered her before.

I think it is the return to work rather than the second baby itself, as she was ok until she went back to work.

In fact, I would say she was ok even after returning to work, until the massive workload the restructuring would involve became apparent.

There is chaos in the bank at the moment with various internal divisions arguing over the final structure that will emerge, so she also faces a lot of uncertainty.

And many staff have already been made redundant.

I have tried giving her ignatia, which has always helped in the past when she was stressed. But these days it doesn't seem to work.

I have also tried giving her bach remedies, including olive, but with little success.


She refuses to see her GP about it - I think she is too proud, and doesn't want to have her future carrer affected by being declared stressed or depressed.

She has never had any psychological or emotional problems before.

She doesn't even want me to discuss her problems with our homeopath, who she knows. I know that is irrational, but that is the way she is at the moment.

I have tried to tell her to take some more time off (though we cannot afford it), but she is afraid that if she stops work for a while the bank will just evict all her hard won personal clientbase and her career will be over - or that someone from another branch of the bank will poach them.

Sometimes when she talks about all the work she will have to do in the coming weeks to move the clients (on top of her normal job) she breaks down in tears.

Also, her normal assistant is on maternity leave, which makes thing harder. She has a new part time assistant but she is having to teach her everything which makes things even worse.

The bank has set a strict time deadline for all the clients to be moved, and it is this which is causing the problems.

My wife went to a christmas party today, but she seemed very depressed when she talked about it.

I asked her why she wasn't looking forward to it and she said "I just don't have time for christmas" and started crying again.


I would really like to give my wife a remedy to help her through all this and to overcome the feeling of being overwhelmed and unable to cope.

Can anyone suggest anything?


Thanks


JJ