Monday, April 12, 2021

How to prevent postpartum depression?

 Postpartum depression refers to women who have obvious depressive symptoms or typical depressive episodes during the puerperium. It belongs to the puerperal psychiatric syndrome, which is the same as postpartum restlessness and postpartum psychosis. The incidence rate is 15% to 30%. Typical postpartum depression occurs within 6 weeks postpartum and can recover on its own within 3 to 6 months, but it can also last for 1 to 2 years in severe cases, and there is a recurrence rate of 20% to 30% in the second pregnancy.

Manifestations of postpartum depression:

1. Emotional changes: The most prominent symptom of the patient is persistent depression, which is manifested as gloomy expression, listlessness, drowsiness, easy tearing and crying. Patients often use words such as "depressed", "desolate", "dull", "empty", "lonely", and "it seems to be separated from others by a wall" to describe their feelings. Patients often feel depressed and depressed, and often lose their temper due to trivial matters. For a long period of time, most of the time the mood is low, even if there are a few days or 1 to 2 weeks in the meantime, the mood improves, but it quickly falls into depression. Despite this, the degree of depression in patients is generally not serious, and emotional reactions still exist. A few humorous aphorisms can make them laugh. A relaxed conversation can make him feel better temporarily. Patients themselves can also perceive their emotional abnormalities, but they often attribute them to others or the environment.


2. Decreased self-evaluation: excessive anxiety about the baby’s health; self-blame, worry about not being able to take good care of the baby; self-defeating and self-guilt; full of hostility towards people around him, and inconsistent relationship with family and husband.


3. Lack of confidence in life: reluctant to feed the baby; feel that life is meaningless; reduce initiative and impaired creative thinking; serious people have suicidal ideation or behavior that hurts the baby.


4. Physical symptoms: easy tiredness; difficulty falling asleep and waking up early; decreased appetite; decreased or even complete loss of libido.

How is postpartum depression diagnosed?


Currently commonly used screening scales for postpartum depression assessment are: Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale (EPDS), Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS), Baker Depression Inventory (BDI), etc.


How to prevent postpartum depression?

1. Strengthen perinatal health care


Use various channels such as maternity schools to popularize general knowledge about pregnancy and childbirth, reduce the tension and fear of pregnant women about pregnancy and childbirth, and improve self-care.


2. Close observation


Pregnant women with a family history of mental illness should be closely observed regularly to avoid all adverse stimuli and give more care and guidance.


3. Full attention


The process of childbirth and pain have a greater impact on postpartum depression, especially for women with long labor and high mental stress. Full attention should be given to them.


4. Psychological counseling


For women with high-risk factors such as bad birth history, stillbirth, malformed fetus, and abnormal mood during pregnancy, they should be given more care and psychological counseling should be carried out as soon as possible.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Depression in women is twice that of men! When she showed these 10 manifestations, she was depressed!

 Women are twice as likely to suffer from depression as men, and as many as one-quarter of women will experience severe depression at some s...