Pregnancy is a period that renders motherhood a positive experience, but for certain women, postpartum is primarily associated with feelings of depression, anxiety, and loneliness. PPD has a deleterious impact on many aspects of a woman’s life and impedes the development of the newborn, whether it is physical, emotional, cognitive, social or interpersonal.
Postpartum depression (PPD) is a form of depression that can start during pregnancy or at any time up to a year after the birth of a child. Depression during pregnancy, or postpartum, is frequently either ignored or misdiagnosed. Insufficient treatment for depression places women at risk of developing untreated affective disease, and depression that may lead to chronic, recurrent, and refractory with the time.
Postpartum depression is one of the most common childbearing complications occurring in 13% of postpartum women worldwide. In developing countries, this is even higher, as between 15.6% and 19.8 % of women report mental health disorders during and after childbirth. Postpartum depression does not have a single cause, but likely results from a combination of physical and emotional factors.
Depression during pregnancy, or postpartum, is often either missed or is misdiagnosed, emphasizing the need for better screening in obstetrical and primary medical care situations. Insufficient treatment for depression puts women at risk for the sequel of untreated affective disease, and depression that can become chronic, recurrent, and refractory.
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Depression during the Perinatal Period
Childbearing is one of the most common but understudied precipitators of depression. Payne and Maguire (2019) outline the various mechanisms involved in the neurobiology of PPD including genetic and epigenetic influences, biochemical factors, neuroinflammatory changes, and circuit-level changes, history of adverse life events and stress are the predominant risk factors in the development of PPD.
Mental health concerns are not always included when discussing complications with pregnancy and childbirth, but there is evidence this gap in understanding the frequency of PPD or similar diagnoses is problematic. Maternal depression can have a negative effect on everyone in the family, including the marital relationship, and other children in the home, but the greatest impact is felt by the newborn that might not experience mother-infant attachment or significant bonding due to the barriers inherent with PPD.
Read More: Effects of Postpartum Depression on Children
PPD and its Impact on Child Development
Many studies have explored the impact of maternal postpartum depression on mother-infant relationships. Mothers of children who scored higher on depression scales were more likely to have children with higher levels of insecure attachment than those who showed less severe symptoms. The cognitive development of children at the age of 18 months is also linked to an insensitive relationship between mother and infant because maternal PPD affects the bonding of mothers and infant, and creates impaired cognitive, social and behavioural development in children up to eight years.
Children’s poor development and mother-infant bonding have been considered a strong risk factor for a wide range of child development and behavioural concerns. PPD depression has serious implications on the child’s cognitive development. The cognitive functions affected adversely include identification of Paige’s objects, IQ and language development. Maternal depression is associated with a range of difficulties in infants and toddlers including emotional dysregulation, lower frustration tolerance, higher rates of non-compliant behavior and emotional liability, decreased positive affect and ability to self-soothe.
Infants of depressed mothers have electroencephalograph (EEG) activity that demonstrates more negative affect and crying, more reactivity and decreased abilities to regulate arousal. Difficulties regulating attention and emotion negatively impact perceptual learning. Infant physical health is also impacted as depressed mothers are less likely to breastfeed and complies with immunizations and well-child visits.
Depression during pregnancy has been proven to significantly relate to shorter gestational age and that shorter gestational age was significantly related to developmental delay in infant cognitive function. Depressed mothers have more challenges in collaboration with their newborn children, than mothers without sorrow. Depressed mothers tend to express fewer feelings, show more tragic effect, are more overt hostility such as anger, criticism and irritability toward their children. Offspring of moms who have been depressed not long after birth indicates more conduct issues in early youth (especially if the depression persists), brings down IQ scores in late adolescence, and raises rates of full of feeling issues in immaturity when maternal depression recurs.
Read More: Postpartum Depression: Causes, Symptoms and Treatment
In conclusion, significant rates of depressive illness in the mothers are closely related to the children’s neuropsychiatric pathology. PPD has been proven to have an association with the development of emotional negativity and behavioural changes in children by the age of two and the co-existence between maternal depression, anxiety and mental illness in adolescents such as major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder or conduct disorder.
