Depression Symptoms

What is depression postpartum?

Depression postpartum is known as perinatal depression. Depression can affect women during or after pregnancy – even a year later -. The exact number of women with depression during this time is unknown. But researchers believe that depression is one of the most common complications during and after pregnancy. Often, the depression is not recognized or treated, because some normal pregnancy changes cause similar symptoms and are happening at the same time. Tiredness, problems sleeping, stronger emotional reactions, and changes in body weight may occur during pregnancy and after pregnancy. But these symptoms may also be signs of depression.

What causes depression postpartum?

Generally, depression is a disease only dependent of each patient. Depression Postpartum is characterized for hormone changes or a stressful life event, for example: death in the family, can cause changes in the woman brain. Often depression is a disease present in a lot of families.

During Pregnancy, some factors may help woman’s chances of develop depression, such as:

Family history of mental illness.

Anxiety about the fetus.

Young mother’s age.

Marital or financial problems.

There are external factors that might help women to develop a depression:

Feeling tired, because not enough rest during night.

Feeling overwhelmed with a new member in the family, or another baby.

Feeling stress in work and with home routines, no matter what.

Sometimes women feel fat, for this reason they can loss control of theirselves.

After Pregnancy:

Usually women have important change in their hormones. While pregnancy, woman’s hormone increase greatly, for example estrogen and progesterone. On the other hand, after childbirth, exactly 24 hours later, all hormones rapidly drops back down to normal levels. Last researches; discovered that changes in hormone levels may lead to depression, just as smaller changes in hormones can affect a woman’s moods before she gets her menstrual period.