Why is the treatment for depression during pregnancy important?
Antidepressants: Safe during pregnancy?
If you have untreated depression, you might not seek optimal prenatal care, eat the healthy foods your baby needs or have the energy to care for yourself.
You are also at increased risk of postpartum depression and having difficulty bonding with your baby.
Depending on the severity of your depression, treatment options might include psychotherapy or antidepressants in addition to psychotherapy.
If I take antidepressants during my pregnancy, will they hurt my baby?
talk to your doctor first, before stopping any medication.
Some newborn babies may have symptoms such as irritability, fast breathing, tremors and poor feeding if their mothers took antidepressants during pregnancy. These symptoms are almost always mild and pass quickly, usually within 2 weeks. Serious problems are very rare.
What causes depression?
We’re not exactly sure. It may be a combination of things, like changing chemicals in the brain or changing hormones. Hormones are chemicals made by the body. Some hormones can affect the parts of the brain that control emotions and mood.
Depression also may be caused by genes. Genes are parts of your body’s cells that store instructions for the way your body grows and works. Genes are passed from parents to children. Depression is more common in people whose family members have depression. This is called a family history of depression.
You’ve been physically or sexually abused. Or you have problems with your partner, including domestic violence (also called intimate partner violence or IPV).
Your pregnancy is unplanned or unwanted. Or you’re single or pregnant as a teenager.
You have stress in your life, like being separated from your partner, the death of a loved one or an illness that affects you or a loved one. Or you’re unemployed or have low income, little education or little support from family or friends.
You have diabetes. Diabetes can be preexisting diabetes (also called pregestational diabetes). This is diabetes you have before pregnancy. Or it can be gestational diabetes. This is a kind of diabetes that some women get during pregnancy.
You have complications during pregnancy, like being pregnant with multiples, birth defects and pregnancy loss. Multiples is when you’re pregnant with more than one baby. Birth defects are health conditions that are present at birth.
They can change the shape or function of one or more parts of the body. Birth defects can cause problems in overall health, how the body develops or how the body works. Pregnancy loss is when your baby dies before birth.
You smoke, drink alcohol or use harmful drugs. Anxiety and Life stress, family history of depression and Poor social support.
Depression is treatable. But if it is not treated, it will affect your children.
Depression can also affect attachment, which is important for your child’s development. Attachment is a deep emotional bond that a baby forms with the person who provides most of his care.
A “secure attachment” develops quite naturally. A mother responds to her crying infant, offering whatever she feels her baby needs—feeding, a diaper change, cuddling. Secure attachment helps protect against stress and is an important part of a baby’s long-term emotional health. It makes a baby feel safe and secure, and helps him learn to trust others.
With treatment, most people recover from depression. Treatment can include one or more of the following:
Social support: Community services or parenting education.
Family therapy: With your partner and/or children. This can help when children are older.
Individual therapy: Talking one-on-one with a family doctor, psychologist, psychiatrist, social worker, or other professional.
Medication: Drugs used most often to treat depression are SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors).
