Effects of postpartum depression on mother and baby
Common prenatal depressive symptoms may lead to premature birth, intrauterine growth retardation, and in mothers, may also be associated with insufficient maternal weight gain, maternal non-compliance with regular visits and examinations, and increased tendency to misuse medical drugs or other non-licensed substances.
Depressed mothers who have children between the ages of 6 and 12 months may suffer a lack of language and visual communication. As for the children, we may notice: sleep and breastfeeding problems, avoidance behavior represented by looking away, body disposition, lack of ability to self-modify mood, in addition to nutritional and metabolic disorders.
In the long term, a loss of connection (between mother and child) may extend into adulthood and can lead to a decline in the cognitive, emotional, linguistic and social capabilities of the child, and some studies indicate the possibility of a higher risk of mood disorders at the age of 16 up to 4 times more.
Symptoms of postpartum depression
Postpartum depression must be differentiated from Baby Blues disorder, i.e. transient postpartum depression, which affects 50% to 80% of mothers in the first 10 days following childbirth, as well as postpartum depression from postpartum puerperium which occurs rarely in 0.1 to 0.2% of mothers, but because of its danger on both the mother and the newborn, it requires immediate treatment in a specialized hospital if possible.
As for the symptoms of postpartum depression, mothers with postpartum depression often suffer from fears of failure, the fear that they will be “bad mothers” unable to meet the needs of the newborn, who is described as “tough and needy” in turn, interpreting the child's symptoms and breastfeeding problems that often appear in the context of this disorder as if they were an affirmation of fears of failing to meet the demands of motherhood, deepening this cycle of fear and exhaustion.
Against a background of personal and social expectations for a time of happiness, the mother’s adverse feelings are associated with more personal and social rejection and prohibition, which is not so severe in the case of depressive disorder not related to pregnancy or childbirth, as it is often difficult for mothers to express their negative feelings towards the child or their fear of failure to perform their maternal mission.
Mothers are exposed to a special kind of burden when they experience obsessive thoughts and motives that include harmful behavior to the child, as one study indicates that thoughts that include killing the child may occur by more than 60% among mothers with major depression, more than twice as frequent among mothers with puerperal or bipolar disorder (<28%). However, this study finds that behavior consistent with these ideas (actually harmful behavior for the child) is almost limited to patients with delusions, that is, with puerperal symptoms, but other studies indicate a tendency to be negligent in assessing the threat to the safety of infants of depressed mothers, where attempts to kill the child may arise from altruistic points of view (fear for the fate of the child, evaluation of the mother... (fear for the fate of the child due to the mother’s poor evaluation of herself and her ability to perform the maternal mission), and the mother’s fear of separation from the child and the presence of connection disorders in the mother may play a role in this.
The risk of a child being killed in the context of postpartum depression is highest in the first year, and suicide attempts are rare during pregnancy and lactation.
Despite the prevention, women with mental disorders are considered to have a high degree of suicidal risk in the postpartum stage. One study indicates that the risk of suicide is 72 times higher in the first year of the child, for women who had to be hospitalized for mental disorder in the postpartum period. It is remarkable that women resort to unusual suicide methods in severity and danger.
As for the puerperal disorder following pregnancy, it is represented by certain psychological symptoms such as delusions, hearing self-thoughts out loud, believing that thoughts are withdrawn, in addition to audio or other hallucinations, and in most cases these symptoms appear in the first two weeks after delivery.
Other negative symptoms may appear, such as “poverty of sentiment” (the lack of emotional expression) or “fatigue of sentiment” (a less severe degree of lack of emotional expression), in addition to inappropriate sentiment (showing an emotion that does not fit the topic at hand, such as laughter when mentioning the death of a loved one, for example)
From a taxonomic point of view, postpartum puerperium appears to be more likely a reversal of bipolar disorder, as it can be seen in 25% to 50% of women with bipolar disorder (manic-depressive disorder).
