The Harsh Reality of Postpartum Depression Among Mothers
Everyone’s heard of The Baby Blues: Mood swings, crying, exhaustion; roughly 80% of mothers experience severe emotions in the days and weeks after giving birth. But many women also experience postpartum depression, taking a longer-lasting and more insidious emotional toll on new mothers.
Around 1 in 8 women experience symptoms of postpartum depression, according to CDC research. The rate of depression diagnoses at delivery is increasing rapidly as well, growing 7x from 2000 to 2015.
What exactly is postpartum depression?
Postpartum depression may be mistaken for baby blues at first, but the symptoms are more intense and persist. They can become so disruptive that mothers can struggle to go about their day or care for their child as well as they’d like.
Symptoms can begin during pregnancy or up to a year after birth. Here’s examples of what those may include, according to the Mayo Clinic:
Depressed mood or severe mood swings
Difficulty bonding with your baby
Withdrawing from family and friends
Loss of appetite or eating much more than usual
Inability to sleep (insomnia), or sleeping too much
Overwhelming tiredness or loss of energy
Intense irritability and anger
Feelings of worthlessness, shame, guilt or inadequacy
Reduced ability to think clearly, concentrate or make decisions
Severe anxiety and panic attacks
Thoughts of harming yourself or your baby
Recurring thoughts of death or suicide
Symptoms can be severe. As with many mental health issues, often the person suffering may blame themselves for feeling a certain way, or feel embarrassed. Postpartum depression can elevate those feelings as a mother feeling inadequate for their child affects their view of themselves within society and their family, leaving many afraid to admit how they’re feeling.
When should you see a doctor?
First, feeling even baby blues warrants a conversation with your primary provider or obstetrician/gynecologist. Schedule an appointment to see an expert. Symptoms such as desire to harm yourself or others warrant immediate attention.
Because postpartum depression can show up at varying times and looks different among mothers, it’s important to keep tabs on how your feelings and emotions are developing in the months following birth.
Here’s how MHT supports doctors in identifying and tracking postpartum depression:
Are you feeling worse than your last visit? What’s the trend been over the past six months? Our patented SmarTest™️ platform tracks progress and outcomes for both patients and providers. For subtle changes in mood and behavior, this kind of tracking helps identify what’s going on with a patient, and what can be done to help them improve.
For clinic managers, MHT increases the per-visit coding for revenue, automatically bills insurers, and refers to specialists. And of course, SmarTest™️ is HIPAA-compliant.
We automate the entire screening process for mental health and substance use disorders.
Testing can be done at-home or in-office from the convenience of a mobile phone or tablet. We’ll send patients assessments, upload results into your EHR, notify you of high-risk answers and make referrals on your behalf. MHT also tracks and uploads subsequent test results performed by referred specialists.
We also integrate artificial intelligence and machine learning into our analysis to help uncover comorbid behavioral health and substance use conditions, what we see as a breakthrough in mental healthcare. Many mothers struggling with postpartum depression may have concurrent mental health issues. It’s important to not only separate the two, but understand how they interact and what disorders commonly show up alongside PPD.
To learn more about how MHT works, contact us today.
Resources:
https://mhanational.org/conditions/pregnancy-and-postpartum-disorders
https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/features/maternal-depression/index.html
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/postpartum-depression/symptoms-causes/syc-20376617
