What is postpartum depression? Ways to help mothers avoid postpartum depression

Postpartum depression is becoming more common and more severe. There are many cases where the mother suffers from postpartum depression but is not detected and treated in time, leading to the mother harming herself and the child she carried for 9 months and 10 days. So what is postpartum depression and ways to help mothers avoid postpartum depression, let’s find out now with lassho.edu.vn!

What is postpartum depression?

We have been going through the days when the COVID epidemic raged, seriously affecting our lives as well as our work. Therefore, people are easily irritable, bored, anxious, desperate, giving birth to serious psychological diseases, including postpartum depression.

Postpartum depression is not a recent occurrence, but almost always, postpartum mothers are susceptible to it, especially women giving birth to their first child. Mothers will have emotional disorders, changes in both physical and mental and behavioral, often negative thoughts, irritability, fatigue or anxiety about problems happening around.

What is postpartum depression?

According to many statistics, about 10-20% of mothers after giving birth fall into psychological disorders and depression. In which, 15% of mothers develop depression in the first 3 months postpartum, 15-25% occur in the first year postpartum.

Postpartum depression can be severe or mild. If it is mild, it will heal on its own, but if it is not detected and intervened, mothers may not be able to control their behavior, destroy themselves or worse, end the lives of both mother and child.

Signs to identify a mother with depression

Here are some symptoms of women with postpartum depression that you need to be aware of:

• Feeling sad often: It is most noticeable to feel sad often, even sad for no reason, just empty, no longer hoping for anything.
• Crying and crying easily: Mothers with postpartum depression will become much more sensitive, so they cry more easily.
• Sleep disorders: When mothers find themselves losing sleep or sleeping more than usual, it is also one of the signs of postpartum depression.
• Irritability: Being easily angered, irritable, unable to control one’s behavior and words is a very common manifestation of postpartum depression.
• Loss of concentration: When doing something, mothers react slowly, cannot concentrate and have difficulty making decisions.
• Eating disorders: Mothers with postpartum depression will easily see when they have anorexia, eat very little or binge eat, uncontrollably.
• Fear of contact with people around: Like all other types of depression, when women suffer from depression, they will not want to contact the outside world, avoid friends and relatives, worse than not want to be close to others. child.
• No longer taking care of yourself: You no longer enjoy your previous hobbies.
• Having thoughts of harming yourself or your child, or thinking about death,…

Signs to identify a mother with depression

Causes and consequences of postpartum depression

Causes of postpartum depression

Some causes, both objective and subjective, leading to postpartum depression in women that you need to know:

• Due to hormonal changes: After giving birth, a woman’s body will have a sudden decrease in estrogen and progestrogen. Besides, thyroid hormones also drop rapidly, causing feelings of fatigue and depression. This is like stress and mood swings due to the slight change in hormone levels before each menstrual cycle.
• History of depression: Mothers who have experienced depression in the past or are being treated for another type of depression are more likely to develop postpartum depression than the general population.
• Fatigue after childbirth: Giving birth has never been an easy task for every woman. Prolonged pain and anxiety lead to loss of strength, fatigue, and the need for a long time to recover.
• Uncontrolled emotions: Women with unplanned pregnancies can be the cause of their emotions being affected. Even for mothers who have planned to become pregnant, depression is still very common. Mothers will often be sad, angry for no reason or always feel that they are not a good mother. These feelings cause low self-esteem and pressure leading to depression.
• Unstable life: Women who lack care and love from close people, especially husbands, often experience shocks such as death of a loved one, a loved one’s illness, or relocation. in,.. are also the causes of postpartum depression.

Causes of postpartum depression

Consequences of postpartum depression

Postpartum depression is a psychological illness that you cannot take lightly, only when you are really a victim or more painful things happen, it is too late.

For women with postpartum depression

Mothers with postpartum depression may lose weight, become malnourished, or become obese due to an eating disorder. In addition, being anxious, restless and sad can lead to a nervous breakdown, having paranoid thoughts and leading to uncontrollable behaviors, causing limitations for yourself or even even suicide.

For children whose mothers have postpartum depression

Children whose mothers have postpartum depression will have delayed language and motor development, may have abnormal behaviors such as irritability and nervousness, difficulty integrating and adapting to the surrounding life.

For a family with someone suffering from postpartum depression

People living with women with postpartum depression are also more likely to develop depression. Prolonged stress and fatigue in the family will greatly affect the psychology and health of members.

Consequences of postpartum depression

Ways to help mothers avoid postpartum depression

It’s normal for everyone to be happy and sad at times, but if after the birth of your baby you often have mood swings, plus anxiety, think immediately about the case that you are at risk of having a baby. depression. Here are a few ways to avoid that dreaded disease.

Speak your heart out

Your best option at this time is to visit a psychologist and talk to get the best advice, the doctor will teach you how to regulate your emotions to keep you from getting worse.

Learn to relax

Dr. Diane Sanford, University of St. Louis pointed out that, new mothers spend at least 15 minutes a day to relax in many ways such as meditation, deep breathing, soaking in water… baby care.

Take advantage of sleeping when your baby sleeps

Normally, mothers often take advantage of work while their children sleep. However, mothers do not know that this action will make mothers more susceptible to depression. According to research by Dr. Michael O’Hara, University of Iowa, new mothers who take advantage of sleeping to make up for the time they are awake are less likely to be depressed.

So during the new birth, especially the first month, you should ask a family member to take care of the baby or hire someone to have time to rest.

Make time for gentle exercise

Exercise is also a form of relaxation, exercising before and after giving birth will help mothers be in a better mood and easily adapt to life after, reducing the risk of depression.

Note that you should not force yourself with strenuous exercises that make you more tired and stressed!

Don’t expect to be a perfect mom

Joyce A. Venis, a psychotherapist, says that depressed mothers are perfectionists . So you must always remind yourself that no one is perfect. Everyone can make mistakes, so sometimes it is normal for you to make a few mistakes, don’t take things too seriously to put pressure on yourself, if you live according to ” perfect” will be prone to depression.

Find a way to get as much help as possible

If you are too tired to take care of your baby, ask for the help of family members, especially many babies in the first month of sleep. If you often have to stay up at night to look after your children, then you will be very susceptible to depression during the day. So ask your husband or a relative to take turns staying up at night to take care of the children so that you have more time to rest.

Face your fear

If you have a fear of breastfeeding, or an upset stomach… Talk to your husband for sharing, understanding, and help if needed.

Join a group of new mothers

After giving birth, many women give up all social relationships and just stay at home all day with diapers, diapers, milk… that’s the cause of depression.

So if you have just given birth, please join the groups of new mothers, so you will see many people in the same situation as you. Besides, joining a group of new mothers can also learn a lot of experience in taking care of babies, which makes you more confident in life.

Consider giving birth and raising children is also a job

Pregnancy and childbirth is a woman’s vocation. This is not a one or two day job, it’s a lifetime job. So before you give birth, you should prepare mentally and carefully so that you don’t feel surprised when your baby appears, this is also a premise to help you avoid the risk of depression.

Always keep an optimistic attitude towards the future

Always keep yourself positive thinking that all difficulties will pass, everything will be better. Your child will slowly grow up and you will have less trouble, every day you take care of your child you will understand your child better and have more experience in taking care of him. With an optimistic mindset, you will get rid of depression.

Hopefully, the information shared just now will help women have more experiences to protect their health and avoid postpartum depression.

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