Winnie, you are absolutely right. Indeed the tragic cases that make the
headlines are women suffering from psychosis. But unfortunately, even
psychosis can start as a long period of depression and the woman`s family or
even her caregivers say "it`s ONLY postnatal depression, she`ll snap out of
it soon."
When I was researching for my book, there were fairly clear definitions in
all of the literature. An average of 80% of women experience the "blues"
not necessarily three day but limited to a few hours/days/not more than
three weeks with mood swings, anxiety, lack of confidence. Interestingly it
was shown by Dr. Ulla Waldenstrom of Sweden (J. Psychosomatic Ob/Gyn JApril
1988) that the peak of the "blues" could be seen on the day of discharge
from the hospital. Across the cultures this could be two or three days
after the birth, five days after a Cesarean birth and in Russia at that time
it was two weeks.
This shows that although it is logical that there is a huge hormonal change
soon after the birth it is actually the homecoming with its chaos and
concerns that is a more significant trigger. It was therefore logical that
cases were less severe and lasted a shorter period where there was a loving
family to put flowers on the table, clean sheets on the beds, leave a big
pot of soup - and then go home and leave the new parents to settle down with
the baby on that first day, with reassurance that at the ring of the
telephone they will return to mother the mother.
The depression that continues more than this limited period was found to be
between 12% and 16% but psychosis was estimated at the conference I
mentioned at about one in 500.
In my prenatal courses, couples often express concerns about the more severe
forms of psychosis and depression and it is important to talk about
definitions, prevention and treatment.
Wendy Blumfield
----- Original Message -----
From: "Winnie Mading" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2008 6:14 PM
Subject: PPD-let's get the terms right
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
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