Remember all of those "crazy women" in the 50's and 60's who thought thalidomide was poisonous...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide

Maybe those women who dare to disagree with their doctors about taking psych drugs during pregnancy have agnosia or something. Should they even have kids? (parody)

Hello, this may seem cheeky but can we do a link exchange? I write the patient blog, Pole to Polar: The Secret Life of a Manic Depressive and have you in my blogroll. If you like my site, could you add me? If you don't, don't, of course.

Sorry to be cheeky.

"Many pregnant and postpartum women falsely think that depressive symptoms, and even clinical depression, are part of the normal experiences of being pregnant and delivering a baby,' said Kimberly Yonkers, M.D."

"That said, postpartum depression happens quite a bit and is very, very intense" Philip D.

Sarcasm time now...
but postpartum isn't normal , RIGHT. It's an abnormal brain chemical disease no one else has. Thats why we are forcibly testing everyone for it, because it isn't common.

For a single man, you have more of a pro-wellness women's perspective than some female ob/gyn docs I've met! Thanks, Philip, for sharing that press release about depression and pregnancy. Beyond the information you post on your blog, I so appreciate your critical thinking, your excellent writing skills and your dry/cynical sense of humor. Keep on keeping on!

There is one enormous conundrum that doctors seem subconsciously to recognize about taking antidepressants during pregnancy. If someone's been on them for years, or even months, and gets pregnant she is in a real predicament because withdrawal can be pure hell and takes a long time. Pregnancy is not the time to be trying to do that, yet the risks to the fetus are also enormous. I think this is why doctors say "weigh the risks" only they try to portray the problem as "relapse" and the "underlying disease" when of course it's withdrawal. There is really only one solution to this and that's not to give these drugs to women of childbearing age -- it's just too damn risky. As for postpartum depresssion the story of Rebecca Beddoe that's mentioned in the article you link to on the Australian newscaster is a good antidote to the naive ramblings of Brooke Shield on her Paxil experience. I say more doulas and less Paxil any day.

It would be interesting to know the impact of this law. Are women who suffer from PPD able to access treatment that makes a difference since identifying a mental health problem is quite different from addressing it? The saddest thing about depression (no pun intended) is that what is represented as treatment is too often treatment in name only.

New Jersey's Statute for PPD Screening:
http://www.njleg.state.nj.us/2006/Bills/PL06/12_.HTM

There is a psychiatric / pharmaceutical plan to "suicide screen" every
child in the United States before they graduate from high school.
Evidence exists that shows massive pharmaceutical backing that will
result in even more overdrugging of kids with psychiatric drugs .

Can you take a moment to view this very short video? Click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfU9puZQKBY

And then sign and forward this petition
http://www.petitiononline.com/TScreen/petition.html to your associates
and everyone you know? It already has over 23,000 signatures.

It's simply a race to inform enough parents so something can be done
about this.

The pharmaceutical wave in this world is affecting future generations and this is an example of this. As a mother, I can safely say I was taught by my female OB/GYN to avoid caffeine, pain relievers etc. and never in my right mind would I have taken anything like a psych med. This places women who do take meds in quite a quandary. I was also taught that you must be off of birth control pills several months too. [before getting pregnant]

It just makes sense, that what goes into the mother goes to the baby. It's all in the blood stream. Being that so many babies are/were "crack babies"-- and that seemed to alarm people--why would psychiatric medication be any less harmful?

The hormonal influence in a woman's body is so key to note, that after pregnancy the levels are shifted, lactation starts, and many women have depression/moodswings/crying for no reason/ because it's the hormones. I feel some women in recent years were medicated for "post partum depression", unnecessarily---and that the antidepressants were the real cause of "disaster".

It's the older generation of women [such as my mom in her 70's] that would teach us younger women [me, now in my 40s]to watch for the non-sensical crying, to expect it, and to know that it was NORMAL, and would pass.

Not to say some women have it worse than others---but I do feel the pharmaceutical influence for depression treatment does more harm than good.

Also--what you eat and drink goes into breast milk--so it's not a wonder a mom on meds and the child both could have some real problems.

Re: Nancy's comment, I agree, Philip is empathetic and writes smartly about women, I've never seen one sexist or anti-woman or anti-mother word written by him. I think that's why so many commenters are women. Thanks!

Also underestimated, I think, are the effects of the chronic sleep deprivation that is a feature of the post-(and often immediate ante-)partum period. In days past there were more people from extended family and the local community available to take over when mum needed a rest. These days, apart from her partner (and even his existence, presence and support is very variable!)... apart from him, she must often just soldier on alone ... battling hormones, lack of sleep and - for a first-timer taking time out of the work-force - the readjustment of sources of self-esteem, a sense of inadequacy in being primarily responsible for care of this wonderful but totally helpness new little person, guilt when she doesn't measure up to internal standards that have been set who knows where etc etc.

I would like to see a trial where extra support was put in place to ensure adequate sleep in the post-partum period (recording hours of sleep etc and tested against a group of women where no special efforts were made) to see how much (if any) post-partum depression could be prevented just by ensuring adequate sleep.

Sorry ... I had skipped over the section about doulas sent in by your reader. Obviously, I agree entirely.

Robyn makes a good point here, that quite often women are on their own and sleep deprived. Sleep can in fact induce psychosis in any person.

I had a friend who had 2 kids age 5 and under and have triplets.

What we did, as women and mothers--assigned shifts all day long, so that the babies were rocked, fed [via breast milk in bottles] while the Mom slept. It was imperative for her to get sleep, more than anything else.

She had to recover.

It takes 6 weeks for the uterus to go back to "normal". I think that says much. Holy cow, the woman just created a life.

Ideal world, would be that woman to have bonding time with her baby, and be nurtured by others. That being said, men also work, and often don't understand women or any of this--so this is why we have women helping women.

Pregnant and sleep-deprived women. Preteen girls supposedly at risk? for cervical cancer via sexually-transmitted Hep B. Kids with ADHD. Elderly people with dementia. Teens screened via computer questionnaire. Middle-aged adults with a bipolar vulnerability to stimulants. All great target markets for Pharma because they are vulnerable, immature, or their opinions can be discounted. So they've got a system where their drug products can be "mandated" for these weak populations who can't be believed or credibly report back ill-effects. It's a third-party marketing system which patients are provided drugs after another party (nursing home, family, government, school) has been sold on the need. Noone closes the loop by inquiring what the drugs are doing to the patient - they simply assume any ill-effects are a progression of the "disease". These patients might as well be animals for all that Pharma will listen to them. This is an incredibly corrosive marketing policy which should give anyone pause before approaching the "system" which would suck them into forced drugging. Physicians should wakeup and realize their own credibility is being challenged to the extent they enable Pharma.

Look for NAMI to argue that since depression is an inherited brain disease it might be good idea for women to take ssri's while pregnant so the fetus can go ahead and start treatment in the womb...I can't wait for the prenatal ssri commercials;)

As we all know, here's where these ways of thinking lead, women with psych labels being sterilized because it's not safe for us to be off meds long enough to have children and it's not safe for us to be pregnant on the meds, oh wait, they did that already, in the 30's with the exact same biopsych argument only it was called eugenics.

Also, women who fear getting caught falling outside of the legally allowed norms of unhappiness avoiding pre and post natal care for fear of forced "treatment," loss of child custody, sterilization, abortion...oh and stigma of the child born to the identified mental defective and subsequent discriminatory treatment of that child for the good of "society." Treatment Advocacy Center's blog had a crazy entry yesterday about a court system to detain people who aren't dangerous and haven't committed crimes but just have defective brains, ain't progress grand? but I digress. Still I bet Fuller Torrey is working on forcing the children of people labeled with mental illnesses to take drugs based solely on the diagnoses of their parents, maybe we should take detailed family histories in case grandparents and even greatgrandparents were smi?
Joe brings up something I hadn't thought of about all of these screening tests - what happens to the uninsured and the financially disabled who are "identified" as mentally ill? If you can't afford treatment, will the cheapest most big pharma free sample participate in this clinical trial centered treatment be forced upon you?

Oh and should men who carry the inherited yet unidentifiable (i.e. nonexistant) gene for mental defectiveness be allowed to father children?