Postpartum Depression

Postpartum depression has been a disorder society has had a hard time accepting. After all, when you have a baby it should only bring great happiness to your life. Yet, being pregnant and having a baby is also a time when the body goes through enormous stress and hormones are produced in excess amounts. In most women this may cause some minor and unpredictable mood changes, but in others it’s quite possible it creates postpartum depression.

Though hormones are the suspect, there’s no definitive proof yet that hormones are the only culprit. Postpartum depression is a very serious disorder that affects women within weeks of giving birth. For some women, the depression begins after only a few days.

Postpartum depression becomes apparent when the new mother has difficulty accepting responsibility for the new infant. There may be lack of interest in the baby or quick irritation when the baby cries. Other symptoms of postpartum depression include the following.

• Unable to sleep
• Feelings of inadequacies
• Exhaustion
• Inability to cope with baby care
• Despondency

The interesting fact is that a woman go complete an entire pregnancy with no signs of anxiety, and then develop postpartum depression after birth. Some cases of postpartum depression are severe and include unexplained and frequent crying and even thoughts of suicide. The new mother has trouble functioning and can’t seem to complete the smallest chores. Also, some women show lack of interest in the infant.

It’s an unpleasant subject, but postpartum depression has been determined to be the cause of a mother injuring the infant or infant siblings. In the severest cases, postpartum depression can develop into a psychosis. A psychosis means the woman is probably hallucinating or has lost a grip on reality. In many of these cases brought to court, the new mother claims she heard voices telling her the baby or her other children must be killed.

The only reason this is discussed is because it’s important to understand that postpartum depression is very real and must be treated. Ignoring the disorder does not make it go away. Fortunately, there are treatments that work well. In most cases, medication is prescribed by the doctor.

If you suspect you, or someone you know has postpartum depression, you should see a doctor immediately. Most women will experience some mild depression after the birth of a baby due to shifting hormones or the realization this child is now a continual responsibility. Before a baby is born, women gets lots of concerned attention from family and friends. Once the baby comes, and the mother is doing fine, the attention stops and the work begins. But postpartum depression is a serious disorder that must be dealt with before symptoms worsen.

Depression and Anxiety

Millions of people throughout the world are suffering from depression and anxiety. Depression and anxiety has thus become a serious mental disorder. According to research both these disorders coexist with each other and in rare cases they are different from each other. It has been discovered that almost 70% of people suffering from clinical depression are also prone to anxiety. This is indeed a serious phenomenon that requires urgent attention. Similarly people who have been diagnosed with anxiety disorder are also suffering from depression simultaneously. In fact depression and anxiety overlap each other so frequently that it forces psychologists to consider both these disorders as facets of the same illness.

It’s natural that people become sad or harbor sad feelings at some point in their lives. There can be many factors contributing to this feeling like retrenchment, loss of a loved one, shattered aspirations or other failures. All these factors may cause a person to experience symptoms of depression. In the same way when people experience stressful situations continuously in their lives they suffer from anxiety and prolonged exposure to such situations leads to a serious disorder. Up to a point it is normal to experience such feelings but you never know when it might snap you into two.
If you are feeling a kind of uncontrollable sadness or utter hopelessness, excessive tiredness, loss of appetite and sleep and the same is bugging you for more than a few weeks, you must realize then that you are suffering from clinical depression. Similarly if your feelings of anxiety outweigh the stresses that you are currently experiencing, or you are experiencing panic attacks frequently then you may be suffering from an anxiety disorder. In most cases anxiety and depression are experienced together and in such cases treatment for both these disorders cannot be provided simultaneously but one at a time.

As explained, in many cases depression and anxiety may overlap each other as such treatment for these two disorders is also given based on this fact. People with anxiety disorders are usually treated with antidepressant medications. For treating both depression and anxiety psychologists apply different types of psychotherapy (cognitive and behavioral therapy) which have resulted in healthy recovery for patients. However sometimes depression is treated first depending on cases. To help patients cope with anxiety, a form of therapy known as exposure therapy (patients are exposed to gradually increasing stress factors) is applied. Sometimes it may me necessary to treat depression first if a person is suffering from both depression and anxiety as depression can sap his/her energy leaving them unable to cooperate. If it is not done so then anxiety therapy would not be effective on that person.

Usually anxiety attacks a person at an early age particularly during childhood or adolescence whereas depression sets in during the later years. In such a case it would be better to treat anxiety so as to prevent depression from developing in adulthood. Depression and anxiety are in fact are ‘in the same boat brother’.