Postpartum Depression is Highly Treatable

Postpartum depression rarely results in the mother harming her baby, according to leading experts including Louise Haimowitz. Despite several high profile cases in the last few years, infanticide is very rare in cases of postpartum depression.

Up to 80 percent of women have the “baby blues” for a few weeks after birth, when a woman’s estrogen levels suddenly drop 300 percent. Normally, it passes within a few days, according to Haimowitz’s recent research.

When anxiety, mood swings and crying jags continue for more than two to four weeks, that signals postpartum depression. New mothers should seek help for this condition, which can grow worse and persist for months. Each year up to 800,000 women experience postpartum depression. A mother experiencing postpartum depression may have thoughts of harming her baby, but recognizes those thoughts are bad and often feels overwhelming guilt for even thinking it. Most new mothers will take steps to ensure they don’t harm the baby, like refusing to hold the infant. Actress Brooke Shields has said that she suffered such impulses during postpartum depression after the birth of her first daughter.

Still, 99.99 percent of mothers with postpartum depression “will never harm a hair on their baby’s head” according to Susan Stone, chair of the President’s Advisory Council for Postpartum Support International, an advocacy group.

A few women with extreme postpartum depression develop psychosis, a break with reality that occurs in less than 2 out of 1,000 births. Symptoms of postpartum psychosis include hallucinations, paranoia and hearing voices. Mothers experiencing postpartum psychosis do not recognize that harming the infant is wrong. Still, they are more likely to kill themselves than to harm their newborn child.

Both postpartum psychosis and postpartum depression are treatable. Mothers must often overcome the assumption that motherhood is the most joyous time of their lives, in order to seek help. In addition, there is a social stigma of mental illness, and the inertia of depression itself, which can weigh the new mother down. Still, the majority of new mothers who seek treatment recover fairly quickly.

By Joni Holderman, [email protected], contributing reporter for Mental Health News.