Mental & Emotional Health

There are two main ways depression and anxiety are treated during pregnancy; psychotherapy and antidepressant medication. If you need to, contact your physician or your nurse (or even your doula) to see if they have a psychotherapy recommendation. (I’m sure that they’ll have great words of advice for you.) Your psychotherapy may involve a dose of anti-depressants, which their use during pregnancy is not completely without risk, research provided by the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (at their 53rd Annual meeting in San Diego) showed that there may be more problems in not treating depression & anxiety during pregnancy.

*Women with major depression are more likely to give birth early (at an average of 35.6 weeks … compared to 39.4 weeks).
*Depressed mothers may give birth to babies with more cortisol (stress hormone) in their cord blood; although the difference is not “statistically significant.” (They mentioned that a larger sampling of babies is necessary to determine this meaning.)
*Depressed mothers may give birth to babies with lower motor-maturity than non-depressed mothers.

There are, however risks to taking SSRI’s (Prozac, Zoloft, Luvox, Paxil, Celexa & Lexapro), they have been mostly considered safe. A study published in Feburary 2006 in an issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine found realized that nearly 1/3 of newborns whose mothers took antidepressants during pregnancy gave birth to babies who dealt with “neonatal abstinence syndrome.” This leads to high-pitched crying, tremors, disturbed sleep, gastrointestinal problems and an abnormal increase in muscle tone (hypertonicity). No child has shown to need medical intervention during this syndrome, but it is uncomfortable.

Even with this in mind, you must remember that women who stop their anti-depressant medications are more likely to relapse into depression; and a mother’s stress hormones may contribute to a risk to the developing fetus.

A story I read from the Med Pages forum almost scared me into the idea of always taking my antidepressants; even while pregnant: “Susan (not her real name), a member of our forum community, was determined to do everything possible to ensure her baby’s well-being. She ate right, exercised, didn’t drink or smoke, never missed a doctor’s appointment, and stopped taking her antidepressants “just in case they might hurt the baby”. During the seventh month of her pregnancy she began to think that maybe her husband and baby would be better off without her. At that time, she says, “My thoughts made perfect sense. I felt I was a burden to my husband because of my depression and that my baby would be better off being raised by someone without my problems.” Her plan, she says, was to wait until the baby was born and then commit suicide. After the baby was born and she had resumed taking Prozac, she said, “I was amazed that I could have thought such things and actually believed that they made sense.”" Antidepressants may have helped Susan through her sucidal thoughts (but everyone is different; remember!)

Please, if you’re feeling depressed, speak to someone. Even if you’re not pregnant!

mental and emotional health, pregnancy, depression while pregnant, anxiety while pregnant, antidepressants, medication compliance, suicide