Codey's wife talks bluntly about having mental illness

Monday, January 10, 2005 The Record of Hackensack

By ELISE YOUNG
STAFF WRITER

Without self-pity, without embarrassment, New Jersey's first lady Sunday told hundreds of strangers about severe psychiatric problems that are "a part of who I am."
"I have a mental illness," Mary Jo Codey said matter-of-factly to an audience at The College of New Jersey in Ewing Township. "I'm not proud of it, but I'm not ashamed of it."
Codey, the wife of acting Governor Codey, started to publicize her treatments for clinical depression shortly after her husband took office in November. In newspaper and television interviews, she has recounted how postpartum depression 20 years ago, after the birth of her first son, led to a regimen of counseling, hospitalization, medication and electroshock therapy.
At one point during her illness, Codey imagined herself drowning the infant, or putting him in the microwave oven. Three years ago, she had a violent reaction to prescribed medicines and wound up in an induced coma. She was recovering from that episode when she suffered another setback: a diagnosis of breast cancer, followed by a double mastectomy. The depression returned, then abated when she sought help from another doctor.
Today her prognosis, mentally and physically, is excellent. She continues to teach in West Orange, where she and her husband raised two sons, Kevin and Christopher. On Sunday, she was the guest speaker at a fund-raiser for the Mercer County Chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.
The audience of nearly 300 sat rapt while she described her initial diagnosis and her first trip to a pharmacy "four towns away" to pick up a prescribed anti-psychotic drug. She wore dark sunglasses, she said, and prayed for one thing: to make the errand without running into any acquaintances.
Now, she said, she knows differently. Her own problem - like that of millions of others - is biochemical in nature, the result of agents in the brain reacting inappropriately with one another. It is not a reflection of upbringing, education or social class.
"Mental illness has nothing to do with shame," she said. "The quality of an individual can be measured in goodness, generosity and kindness - not by a chemical imbalance called mental illness."
In a brief interview backstage, Codey said that for the next 12 months of her husband's term, she will continue to talk to such groups.
"Sharing my own personal story, about postpartum [depression] in particular, can help lessen the stigma," she said.
Seventy percent to 80 percent of new mothers experience "the baby blues" shortly after birth, according to surveys by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Often the feelings of sadness, anxiety, fear and anger recede after a few days, the surveys said. But 10 percent of women can't seem to shake the bad thoughts. The problem - attributed to a combination of hormones, emotions and tiredness - can escalate to the point where a mother harms the children or herself.
For 11 years, Codey has had a role in a postpartum depression support group at St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston. Her husband's elevation to the governor's job - he had been Senate president prior to James E. McGreevey's resignation - inspired her to talk more often, and to a wider audience.
Now, she said, women approach her "all the time" to talk about episodes after the births of their children.
"People say, 'I can't believe someone like me had such scary thoughts,'Ÿ" Codey said.
Codey's appearance was followed by a lecture and piano performance by Richard Kogan, a psychiatrist and orchestral soloist. Kogan - who uses the music of Beethoven, Chopin and others to demonstrate a link between mental illness and creativity - based Sunday's lecture on Russian composer Peter Tchaikovsky, who had lifelong episodes of depression.
E-mail: younge@northjersey.com