Today is a blogging day of action in support of education about and the treatment of post partum or post natal depression. For up to a year after giving birth, women can experience horrific mood swings, feelings of worthlessness, fears of a conspiracy to harm them or their baby, or a numbness to all of their experiences. This is a hormonal condition that, in it’s most severe form, post partum psychosis, has lead women to harm themselves and their families.

The news about post partum psychosis is not encouraging. In an examination of medical records, Danish researchers found that as many as one in a thousand women suffer from Post Partum Psychosis in the year after giving birth. The results, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association quantified the cases of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression or another psychotic condition requiring hospitalization.

The evidence is mounting that a happy, healthy mother leads to happy, healthy kids.
 
“If you’ve got a role model in your life that can’t cope or deal with stress, you’re not going to learn any skills yourself,” says mother Angie Hill in a recent article in the Toronto Star on Post Partum Depression.  
Eight months after the birth of her son, the radio show host sought help for what she knew were depressive episodes.
 
According to a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association proves that Hill’s seeking treatment not only helps her, but her son as well:

Treating depressed mothers rapidly reduces the likelihood of …read more

I am thinking about post partum depression (PPD) a lot these days.
 
There is so much media on the subject that I could post on the topic every day. The reason I don’t is because I think parents, and society as a whole, are forgetting that having a baby is a happy event. These new people bring joy, fresh hope for the entire planet, a chance for a family to multiply its capacity for love.
 
That said, it is often hard to separate symptoms of post partum depression from the normal sensitivies of becoming a mother. There’s a joke circulating on the …read more