By Angela Townsend, The Plain Dealer
The images are hard to miss -- and for some women, hard to live up to.
Magazine ads for high-end maternity wear -- and, it seems, every photo of celebrity pregnancies -- show images of women with impeccable hair and makeup and glowing smiles. Commercials for baby products depict an environment of easy bliss. Mom, Dad, baby and everyone else in their world appear healthy, happy, content.
It's no wonder, then, that anyone who falls short of these inflated images during and after pregnancy may feel a bit overwhelmed and guilty.
According to the March of Dimes, one in eight women suffers from postpartum depression, which can begin at any time within the first three months after delivery.
Unlike the "baby blues," a common condition that usually subsides within the first couple of weeks after birth, postpartum depression is real depression and can be so debilitating to the mother that it puts a newborn baby's health and care in jeopardy.
Perinatal (during pregnancy) and postpartum clinical depression are as severe and significant an illness as depression experienced by men and nonpregnant women, said Dr. Toni Johnson, associate director of behavioral medicine and counseling and director of emergency psychiatry services at MetroHealth Medical Center.
"It's a biological illness," Johnson said. "It has nothing to do with a person's character or desire to parent."
Women with a history of severe PMS are at higher risk for perinatal and postpartum depression -- and for depression during menopause.
"The reproductive cycle has a big impact on a woman's risk for depression," Johnson said. One common theory is that the hormones estrogen and progestin somehow influence brain chemistry.
That can provide essential clues as to whether a woman needs to seek treatment for depression, she said.
When Karen Gross of Lyndhurst begins working with a new client, she focuses immediately on the delivery.
"Sometimes, the way a woman's delivery goes [contributes to] postpartum depression," said Gross, a member of the Doula Network of Northeast Ohio. "Especially if it didn't meet her expectations -- if she wanted a natural childbirth but had to have an epidural or a cesarean."
Physical and hormonal changes, alone or coupled with life stressors, can precipitate the depression, Johnson said. For that reason, educating a woman early on about her reproductive life is important in the treatment of depression. But instead of focusing on changes in appetite, sleep and energy levels -- changes that often signal depression but that are hard to gauge in pregnant women and those who have just recently had babies -- physicians instead use another tool…
No comments:
Post a Comment