Many women in my clinical practice suffer from postpartum anxiety or depression. These symptoms can present up to a year after you have your baby. Women (and/or sometimes their partners) may worry excessively, suffer from insomnia, experience low appetite, experience physical symptoms or panic attacks, have persistently low mood, feel overwhelmed, cry frequently, feel irritable or apathetic, experience mood swings along with a range of other symptoms When your default is compromised because of your emotional state, it can be particularly hard to trust yourself . At times it can feel difficult to access good, reliable information from a dependable resource. If you google “when to sleep train” you might find 20 articles saying different things about when, if and how. How do you know who to trust in the midst of information overload. The rates of postpartum and pregnancy-related mood disorders are higher than many people realize. -Roughly 80% of new mothers’ experience “normal” baby blues in the first few weeks after a baby arrives. -1 in 7 experiences serious levels of anxiety or depression during pregnancy or postpartum in the first 3 months following the birth of a child. If you follow these women for a year postpartum the rate increases to 1 in 5! -1 to 2 out of 1000 women suffer from postpartum psychosis -1 in 10 fathers experience postpartum depression (above three statistics are cited from: Wisner KL et al JAMA Psychiatry, 2013; Paulson et al, JAMA, 2010) Suicide is one of the three leading cause of maternal death around the world. Bleeding and hypertension were number 1 and 2. The peak risk for suicide in this study was 7 to 9 months postpartum. Dell & O’Brien, 2003 Who is at risk for postpartum mental health mood disorder?
Why talk about these statistics?
Med-Psych’s Parent Consultation approach is to both address the concern you have for your child from a medical perspective as well as help you identify whether there are parenting/psychological issues at play that impact your current struggle Whether a parent is experiencing a postpartum mental health disorder or simply something that is coming up for him/her surrounding a particular parenting struggle, we appreciate how important it is to help our clients understand their own reaction to the issue so that it can be most effectively addressed.
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