A new US study suggests that healthy women diagnosed with postpartum depression are at higher risk of heart attack, stroke or heart failure.
What is postpartum depression?
Postpartum depression depends on psychological, biological, and socio-cultural factors. Depression itself risks having harmful consequences on the newborn, on the mother, on the marital relationship and the family balance. Therefore, its screening, prevention and treatment are essential.
After giving birth, the mother experiences a significant drop in hormones. The real link between this fall and depression is not yet clearly established. What is known is that levels of estrogen and progesterone, the female sex hormones, increase tenfold during pregnancy. They then drop suddenly after childbirth, then after three days, the levels of these hormones gradually return to normal.
Most new mothers experience the “baby blues” after giving birth. One in ten women develop more serious and longer-lasting depression after giving birth. And about 1 in 1,000 women develop postpartum psychosis.
Fathers are not immune. Research shows that around one in ten new fathers experience depression in the year their child is born.
-What are the symptoms of postpartum depression?
- feeling sad for no apparent reason
- frequent unexplained crying
- feeling overwhelmed and devalued
- having thoughts of harming the baby or yourself: This is called impulse phobia
- inability to properly care for your child
- lack of energy or motivation
- feeling worthless, guilty, or like a bad parent
- sleep too much or not enough
- change in appetite
- chronic headaches, aches, pains or stomach problems
Postpartum depression could be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease
The researchers of theAmerican Heart Association examined the birth records of 1.8 million California women who had no history of cardiovascular disease or chronic depression. Of these women, 40,276 were diagnosed with postpartum depression.
Published in the Journal of the American Heart Associationthe study indicates that Women who have suffered from postpartum depression could have a 70% increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease in the five to twenty years following childbirth..
The doctor Punag Divanjiprincipal investigator of the study and cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, explains that this phenomenon may have a link to the drop in estrogen and progesterone levels after childbirth. These two hormones increase exponentially during pregnancy, and decrease gradually thereafter.
However, more research needs to be done before the real causes of this phenomenon can be determined, said Dr Divanji.
