Mental health and the importance of its care has come out of obscurity very recently: disorders and diseases that were once stigmatized are becoming visible. However, not all circumstances have had the same focus: postpartum depression still in that dark room of shame and misinformation. Why does this happen if one in ten mothers can suffer from it? Laura Bernaldo de Quirós Ramos, psychiatrist specializing in Perinatality, reveals its keys.
To know how to identify postpartum depression, we must start from a key finding, according to this expert: “be a mother It has a very important psychological impact that has to be digested little by little and that is not achieved in days, but in months and years. It is therefore normal to feel “emotional disturbances” in the first days and weeks after childbirth.the result of a mental process that involves “a restructuring of the mother, of her world, her routines and her desires.”
What “is not normal,” the specialist clarifies, “is a mother who is as if nothing had happened, neutral.”. What warning would then indicate postpartum depression? Ups and downs of an intensity that “destroys” the mother, that “does not allow her to take care of herself or the babyand not ask for help,” he explains.
What symptoms can be detected?
Lately the expression has become fashionable baby blues on social networks (RRSS) to refer to the feeling of sadness after childbirth. But it is important to distinguish it from depression: if it is mild in intensity and does not go beyond two or three weeksis part of the natural process of adaptation to motherhood. But if it gets worse, the mother herself may not identify it and there Your close circle will play an important roleyou should be aware of:
- Subtle: increasing sadness or distancing from the baby. Anxiety and insomnia and obsessive or ruminative thoughts may also arise.
- Very visible: lack of vitality, feeling of guilt, rejection of the baby and perhaps abuse, regret about motherhood.
- Graves: suicidal thoughts, psychotic processes, hallucinations (seeing the child when he is not present, seeing a girl in a boy…).
What to do when suspected
If the mother is aware of her depression, or her close circle, A first consultation can be done in primary care, with your family doctor, matron or pediatricianhealth professionals who, however, have not always been able to have the opportunity to train in perinatal mental health, since it is not an area that is dealt with widely and deeply in their academic itineraries. “It is a very delicate and vulnerable moment, and A very simple intervention can have very important consequences“, highlights this specialist.
It should not be understood as an alteration that arose in the time immediately after childbirth since, as Bernaldo de Quirós indicates, symptoms can appear even months later: in that case the correct name would be perinatal depression. Once suspicions are confirmed, the ideal is to go to a perinatal mental health specialist, psychologist or psychiatrist, that prescribes the appropriate therapy.
The tyranny of perfection in social networks
We live in times of influencers who broadcast their births on social networks and who lose weight and shape their pregnant bodies in record time. The tyranny of perfection has been installed in motherhood and not only in the physical but also in the psychological sphere.: RRSS amplify sweetened pregnancies that disrupt reality, what happens off screens. “Natural processes may arise that are not always happy, there are inevitable complications and worries.uncontrollable circumstances,” reflects Bernaldo de Quirós.
The visibility of emotional alterations is, in his opinion, a positive contribution of social networks, but at the same time he highlights another very negative one: “That need to erase all traces of being a pregnant woman and not leaving room for living like a mother, physically and mentally“.
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