Define Postpartum Depression. Pregnancy, abortion, birth and depression ?
Q.What do we know about depression in women in 1996? Everybody feels depressed at some time. But the feeling of depression is not the same thing as the illness of clinical depression. According to the DSM-IV,[1] to be diagnosed with a major depressive episode, a patient must have had a depressed mood or loss of interest or pleasure for at least 2 weeks, accompanied by significant distress or impairment, as well as at least 4 out of a number of classic symptoms.
A.To make the diagnosis of major depressive disorder, the physician must determine that the woman has had the necessary number of symptoms for at least 2 weeks. A lot of times people have had the symptoms far longer. In fact, most people without treatment, the depression will lift and sometimes even go away entirely. However, the patient can have a very torturous time waiting to get better, and some will never recover fully without treatment. Depression thus turns out to be a very important illness to recognize and diagnose. Does this _not_ happen in America then? That is terrible, absolutely dreadful. Postnatal depression and postpartum psychosis can cause huge difficulties with the mother-child bond anyway, but if the woman has to be separated from her child and is not allowed to care for it, this will make things a lot worse. What's more, if the woman is depressed, her symptoms are likely to include guilt over what she sees as her poor mothering skills. What effect is it going to have on her if the baby isn't allowed to stay with her? It's going to confirm the way she feels about herself, and make her depression worse. This is bad for the mother and bad for the child. Why on earth are things done this way in America? The point is that it's unpredictable, though some women are more likely to suffer than others. Just as depression following an abortion is unpredictable but some women are more likely to suffer than others. By who? Even doctors are wrong sometimes. Seems like it would be difficult to point the blame at the birthing as the cause, since it is so subjective. In fact, some of the information you provided would lead most people to believe it wasnt the birthing that caused the depression, since she had two other births without the depression. That is a physical thing which rarely happens outside of some other physical thing occuring, i.e. an operation. But depression can occur at anytime, to anyone. Period.
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