The last taboo
A recent study reported in the British Medical Journal sends out a powerful message to doctors and midwives: new mothers should be screened for the warning signs of depression long before delivery day.
While postpartum depression tends to attract the lion's share of attention, the researchers involved in this study determined that women are far more likely to be depressed during pregnancy than after giving birth. While 13.4 percent of women who were 32 weeks pregnant showed symptoms of depression, just 9.1 percent of women with eight-week-old babies exhibited those same symptoms.
So if prenatal depression is, in fact, more common than postpartum depression, why aren't more pregnant women talking about it? The reason is simple: there's even more of a taboo about admitting that you're suffering from prenatal depression than there is to admitting that you're suffering from postpartum depression. After all, aren't you supposed to be positively euphoric for the entire duration of your pregnancy, morning sickness and all?
Of course, it doesn't help that many of the symptoms of prenatal depression mimic common pregnancy complaints. It can be hard to determine whether the fatigue, insomnia and appetite changes that you are experiencing are garden-variety pregnancy complaints or symptoms of full-blown prenatal depression. If those symptoms are accompanied by such classic depression symptoms as persistent sadness, a loss of enjoyment of life, anxiety, an inability to concentrate and/or extreme irritability, you should at least consider the possibility that you could be suffering from prenatal depression.
