Postpartum psychosis or postpartum psychosis is a psychiatric disorder that affects some women after about 2 to 3 weeks of delivery.
This disease causes signs and symptoms such as mental confusion, nervousness, excessive crying, as well as delusions and visions, and treatment should be done in a psychiatric hospital, with follow-up and use of medication to control these symptoms.
- It is usually due to hormonal changes experienced by women during this period.
- But it is also strongly influenced by mixed feelings due to changes with the child’s arrival.
- Which can cause postpartum sadness and depression.
- Learn more about postpartum depression.
Psychosis usually occurs within the first month after delivery, but it can also take longer to show signs. This can cause symptoms such as:
In addition, the mother may have distorted feelings about reality and the baby, ranging from love, indifference, confusion, anger, mistrust and fear, and, in very serious cases, can even endanger the child’s life.
These symptoms may appear suddenly or gradually worsen, but help should be sought as soon as their onset is noticed, because the sooner treatment, the greater the chances of recovery and recovery of the woman.
The time of the child’s arrival marks a period of many changes, in which feelings such as love, fear, insecurity, joy and sadness are mixed. This large amount of feelings, associated with changes in women’s hormones and body during this period, are important factors that trigger an epidemic of psychosis.
For example, any woman may suffer postpartum psychosis, although some women may have an increased risk of aggravating postpartum depression, who already had a history of depression and bipolar disorder, or who experience conflicts in personal or family life, such as difficulties at work. , economic life, and even because they had an unplanned pregnancy.
Postpartum psychosis treatment is performed by the psychiatrist, using medications based on each woman’s symptoms, which may be with antidepressants, such as amitriptyline, or anticonvulsants, such as carbamazepine. In some cases, electroshock therapy, which is an electroconvulsive therapy, may be needed, and psychotherapy can help women who have psychosis associated with postpartum depression.
Generally, it is necessary for the woman to be hospitalized in the first few days, until it improves, so that there is no risk to her and the baby’s health, but it is important that contact is maintained, with supervised visits, so that the bond is not lost. with the baby. Family support, whether with child care assistance or emotional support, is critical to helping with recovery from the disease, and psychotherapy is also important to help women understand the timing.
With treatment, a woman can be cured and returned to the life of a baby and family, however, if treatment is not done quickly, she may have worse and worse symptoms, to the point of completely losing consciousness of reality, and may put your life and that of the baby at risk.
Postpartum depression usually occurs during the first month of the child’s birth and consists of feelings such as sadness, melancholy, easy crying, discouragement, changes in sleep and appetite. In case of depression, it is difficult for a woman to perform daily tasks and create a bond with her baby.
In psychosis, these symptoms can also occur because they can develop from depression, but in addition, the woman begins to have very incoherent thoughts, feeling of persecution, changes in mood and restlessness, as well as being able to have visions or hearing. Voices. Postpartum psychosis increases the risk of the mother committing infanticide because the mother develops irrational thoughts, believing that the baby will be luckier than death.
Thus, in psychosis, women are excluded from reality, while in depression, despite symptoms, they are aware of what is going on around them.