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Prenatal depression

Medical science is finally bringing this problem out of the closet. What every pregnant woman should know about battling depression

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Originally published in Today's Parent December 2004


The closet door just creaks open a crack — and it turns out there’s a real crowd huddled behind the door...

“I call it the anger thermometer — throughout the day, I would feel my anger going up, up, up, then I would explode. Then I felt so guilty — because that’s not part of my personality; I’m usually very easygoing and calm — that I would cry. That would happen three or four times a day.” – Sheri Johnson Purdon

“I couldn’t relax, I couldn’t sleep, I felt jittery — but it felt kind of nice to be so energized. I didn’t relate any of this to anxiety — I just thought I was excited and just going through an adjustment. Then I became increasingly anxious, increasingly irritable, I started to feel really down on myself. I thought I was a bitch. I thought I was ungrateful, and I needed to buck up and accept my new life and get on with things, but for some reason, I couldn’t.” – Jessica Banas

Christine Long is used to staring into a sea of strained, skeptical faces when she starts delivering one of her training seminars on prenatal and postpartum depression — until the Mississauga-based consultant points out mood disorders rank right up with hemorrhoids on the list of common complications of pregnancy. “When I say, ‘If we’re treating and talking about hemorrhoids, then why aren’t we treating and talking about this?’ people start laughing, and their shoulders relax. They go, ‘OK, it’s not so bizarre.’”

In fact, recent research has confirmed something Long began to suspect during her stint as executive director of Postpartum Adjustment Support Services – Canada (the organization has since disbanded due to lack of funding): Pregnancy doesn’t ward off depression or other mood disorders. In fact, a number of researchers have found that in at least one-third of women diagnosed with postpartum depression, the disorder actually had begun long before women gave birth.

“Several studies have established that the prevalence of depression during pregnancy is about 10 to 12 percent,” observes Shaila Misri, director of the Reproductive Mental Health Program at BC Women’s and St. Paul’s hospitals in Vancouver. The rate goes up significantly in certain groups, such as teen mothers and women living in difficult economic circumstances.

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