The prestigious publication PLos Medicine collects a recent study by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm that focuses on the analysis of cases of postpartum psychosis and delves into the possible factors that increase its incidence. The study, excellent, amazes in a country like ours, in which asking about the rate of caesarean section of a hospital makes them look at you like a madwoman, and where real research is really needed to discover the factors that can do that the deliveries and postpartos are better.
The postpartum psychosis It is a relatively rare but serious disease, whose origin remains unknown. The study has investigated obstetric factors and circumstances that are related to a higher incidence of this problem, especially in cases that ended with the hospitalization of the mother.
Many women suffer some postpartum emotional disorders, ranging from a certain melancholy and normal hypersensitivity to severe depression. But there are some cases that end in psychosis and need hospitalization. Approximately one in every thousand women suffers from this problem as serious as unknown.
The study has revealed that women over 35 years seem more likely than young women to develop the problem in the first few days. They also point out that those who have a history of hospitalizations for previous psychiatric reasons are twice as likely to suffer from this psychosis.
The work has been based on very complete data collected by the health records of Sweden from 1983 to 2000 and focused on the births of 745,000 newborns. Of these 892 mothers needed to be admitted by psychosis in the first months after delivery and half of them had a previous history of psychiatric problems.
There is no clear conclusion about the causes of postpartum psychosis, But without a doubt, childbirth is the concrete cause of many of the episodes. It remains to investigate what specific factors can trigger it, because no definitive conclusions have been reached and everything indicates that there may be a biological origin caused by the huge hormonal changes in the postpartum period.
Via | PLos Medicine
