from a recent posting: We heard that PPD is the number one source of maternal death in the UK and only this week I heard of the death of a mother of newborn twins near my own home town in Hampshire - two weeks after the birth she walked out into the motorway and was killed by a truck."
As I understand it, this mother would have ben suffering from postpartum PSYCHOSIS, not depression.  While PPP may initially appear as PPD, they are not the same thing.  The reason I feel so strongly is that the media keeps getting it wrong.  Every time a mother harms her children the media calls it PPD and a host of moms chime in and say they had PPD and would have never harmed their babies so she shouldn't try to get away with such a horrendous murder.  Because of this misunderstanding, too many moms with PPP get convicted of murder because "depression is no excuse" when what they realy need is care for a medical genuine condition.  I vividly remember many years ago in a psych clinical rotation there was a mom with PPP who was hospitalized because someone correctly recognized it when she spoke of harming her baby.  When not distracted by her "voices" she was the sweetest most loving woman you could imagine.
As health care professionals, we need to be sure we are not contributing to public misinformation.
Please don't take this as a slam on the original poster.

Winnie


             ***********************************************

Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html
To reach list owners: [log in to unmask]
Mail all list management commands to: [log in to unmask]
COMMANDS:
1. To temporarily stop your subscription write in the body of an email: set lactnet nomail
2. To start it again: set lactnet mail
3. To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet
4. To get a comprehensive list of rules and directions: get lactnet welcome