Would you marry someone with a history of mental illness?

[Anonymous]

I have clinical depression. A simple pill each night fixes 99% of it. My husband just gently reminds me each night to take my meds. It doesn't seem like that big of a struggle compared to other challenges we face together.

As for my son inheriting it, I do worry that he will have to battle it, but I am grateful that I am diagnosed so I am aware and can look for signs and get him help sooner. No one in my family was willing to think I was anything more than "melodramatic", so I didn't get diagnosed until I had a child and my OB thought it was PPD. With my son, I'll have him in therapy at 12 if the signs are there.

[Anonymous]

People are being hypersensitive here but the fact of the matter is people use all kinds of reasons to rule out mates and this is one of them. Some would never marry a fat person, a black person, a disabled person and so on. It just is. There is no reason to get upset, there are plenty of people married to fat people, black people, disabled people and people with mental illness. Some people are less shallow and have more capacity to love than others. Such is life.

[Anonymous]

It would depend on what it is. The brain can do hellish things to a person/family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People are being hypersensitive here but the fact of the matter is people use all kinds of reasons to rule out mates and this is one of them. Some would never marry a fat person, a black person, a disabled person and so on. It just is. There is no reason to get upset, there are plenty of people married to fat people, black people, disabled people and people with mental illness. Some people are less shallow and have more capacity to love than others. Such is life.

Yes, but there is reason when people try to justify those bigoted reasons as valid. There is also a problem when people who know nothing about the spectrum of depression, anxiety, bipolar and other mental illnesses try to explain it through their very undulated, narrow lense.

[Anonymous]

*uneducated

[Anonymous]

No. ESPECIALLY not bi-polar or depression.

[Anonymous]

I think a lot of the people here who are highly against it, have some personal experience with it. It's not a picnic and they wouldn't recommend it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As someone who has anxiety that has changed my life, yes it's a deal breaker. I would not wish for a partner to deal with me, or have to see my future kids suffer.

Please be kind to yourself and ignore this vicious thread. Signed - Anxious Mother married to an Anxious Dad with Two Wonderful Boys - a great family

[Anonymous]

Terrible thread. Mental illness is such a broad term. It's like asking if you'd marry someone with respiratory illness and including mild allergy sufferers in the same bucket as terminally I'll lung cancer patients. Most people will suffer from some form of mental illness at some point in their lives. Many suffer from chronic but relatively mild symptoms most of their lives and most of them are not aware of it. Some of the most wonderful, most talented, and most successful people to have ever lived and contributed to society have suffered from one mental illness or another. If you want to give such people a pass, by all means do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Terrible thread. Mental illness is such a broad term. It's like asking if you'd marry someone with respiratory illness and including mild allergy sufferers in the same bucket as terminally I'll lung cancer patients. Most people will suffer from some form of mental illness at some point in their lives. Many suffer from chronic but relatively mild symptoms most of their lives and most of them are not aware of it. Some of the most wonderful, most talented, and most successful people to have ever lived and contributed to society have suffered from one mental illness or another. If you want to give such people a pass, by all means do.

+1000

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People are being hypersensitive here but the fact of the matter is people use all kinds of reasons to rule out mates and this is one of them. Some would never marry a fat person, a black person, a disabled person and so on. It just is. There is no reason to get upset, there are plenty of people married to fat people, black people, disabled people and people with mental illness. Some people are less shallow and have more capacity to love than others. Such is life.

I was with you until you got to the "other people's free choices suck" part...

[Anonymous]

No, i would not. My ex hid is mental illness and eventually it got much much worse. I had to put him in a mental hospital for him to even acknowledge it. He is on meds now, by they often don't work and he likes to play with dosages or just stop taking them. Our kid has inherited some of it too.

I stood by him, took his crazies for 10 years. And he left me because I put on 50 lbs. yep.

[Anonymous]

NOOOOOOOOOOO..............
IT IS A DEAL.BREAKER.

[Anonymous]

I did - after 5 years, I left my alcoholic ex and started over - divorced, in debt and pretty much hate men.

My brother did - his children have been in therapy for years from the damage that his bipolar wife did.

Children of mentally ill father, married mentally ill spouses.

My advice, run away from the mentally ill. They are F-ed up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Terrible thread. Mental illness is such a broad term. It's like asking if you'd marry someone with respiratory illness and including mild allergy sufferers in the same bucket as terminally I'll lung cancer patients. Most people will suffer from some form of mental illness at some point in their lives. Many suffer from chronic but relatively mild symptoms most of their lives and most of them are not aware of it. Some of the most wonderful, most talented, and most successful people to have ever lived and contributed to society have suffered from one mental illness or another. If you want to give such people a pass, by all means do.

All of these "talented" people with mental illness that you are thinking of have horrible stories of abusive family lives, etc.

If you have wonderful stories of the mentally ill - please cite one.