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Baby Blues and Beyond:
How Will You Know You Need Help?

March 28, 2001

Baby Blues. From 50% to 80% of new mothers experience this distress. It is a mix of hormonal readjustment, physical fatigue and ambivalence over the new responsibilities combined with the blissful sense of accomplishment that sends many a new mother on an emotional roller coaster ride.

Usually these feelings fade in a matter of 1 to 2 weeks after the baby is born. However, for some women the "baby blues" settles in for a longer span of time. This condition runs the gamut of feelings from loss of interest in daily activities, to bouts of crying, to loss of appetite and difficulty sleeping. This characterizes depression, and in the case of a new mother is called "postpartum depression".

Postpartum depression can begin any time during the first 6 months of birth and can disrupt the important bonding that the new mother needs to have with her young infant.

The good news is that it is a highly treatable condition. Medication or counseling, or both, offer effective treatment. With treatment, postpartum depression can lift, often in several weeks.

The roadblock to this effective recovery has been identifying the women at risk. Too often the condition is overlooked until the new mother is severely depressed. However, a recent study, conducted by Dr. Barbara P. Yawn, a family physician and director of research at the Olmstead Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota and her colleagues has shown that there is a quick and ready way to identify women at risk for postpartum depression.

The researchers employed the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), a simple 10-question questionnaire and administered it to 171 women at their 6-week postpartum check-up. Those women who scored abnormally on this questionnaire were found to be 7 times more likely to suffer postpartum depression than those who scored normally. These results were published in The Journal of Family Practice.

While this screening tool is available, Dr. Yawn remains concerned that it is not used often enough. "The message to women is if your doctor doesn't ask, ask them", Dr. Yawn said.

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