What you may find reassuring is that half of all pregnant women worry and experience some anxiety. This is completely normal considering the life changes you are facing. It is only an average of about 9.5 percent of women who may experience the more serious symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder, with panic disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder coming in distant seconds.
Depression and Pregnancy
Then there are eating disorders, bipolar disorder, perinatal depression, and recurrent major depression that will affect mood during pregnancy in some women. Researchers believe that perinatal depression is one of the most common mood disorders women may experience, during, or after pregnancy. As much as 20 percent of pregnant women experience some form of depression, from minor to major.
Factors that increase the likelihood of depression are a history of drug abuse or depression; anxiety about the fetus; inadequate support from family or friends; family history of mental illness; problems with previous pregnancy or birth, and marital or financial problems.
And there’s a study that proposes that children with moms who were experiencing depression during pregnancy have a one and a half times greater chance of being plagued by depression by age 18. The thinking behind this theory is that there are physiological responses to this depression that may pass through the placenta and influence the brain development of the fetus.
Additionally, a study published in JAMA Psychiatry found that perinatal episodes are prevalent across the spectrum of mood disorders. This seems to reflect that there is a transference of disorders through a mother’s psychological state in pregnancy. More studies have to be conducted to confirm these findings but they are intriguing.
Recurrent Major Depression
When individual or group counseling, support groups or diversions fail to lift a pregnant woman out of depression, it may be time to face the possibility that you are dealing with recurrent major depression (RMD).It is to be noted that major depression strikes twice as many women as men with a lifetime occurrence of 21 percent for women and nearly 13 percent for men.
If the depression lasts more than two weeks and there is an apparent loss of interest in activities, this may be RMD. Other symptoms include: restlessness or feeling like you are slowing down; feeling overwhelmed; recurrent thoughts of death or suicide; trouble sleeping or sleeping too much; fatigue; feelings of guilt, sadness or worthlessness; lack of energy, or withdrawing from friends.
Continued RMD by the mother could result in poor nutrition; smoking; drinking; suicidal thoughts and behaviors, prolonged or premature labor and low birth weights.
The Flip Side of Bipolar Disorder – Mania
For those women who have bipolar disorder (BD), more than 20 percent of pregnancies were affected by mania. Manic episodes typically last a few days to a few weeks. Symptoms include impulsive behaviors, decreased need of sleep, racing, disorganized thoughts and a jump in personal energy levels.
Women with BD are at higher risk of an episode during pregnancy, perhaps as high as five to ten times more likely, than those without BD. It is thought that hormonal changes, stressors like emotional, financial and familial ones and sleep disturbance may all contribute to a manic episode.
Also, women with manic episodes are at risk for complications to both the mother and fetus during pregnancy and birth. This is generally ascribed to impulsive behaviors associated with manic episodes such as increasing one’s use of a drug of choice or dropped doctor’s appointments or follow-ups.
Perinatal Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders
Obsessive-compulsive disorders, OCD, in pregnant women strikes about one to two percent of the population. Unfortunately, if a woman already has OCD, her symptoms will more than likely worsen during her pregnancy. But OCD associated with the pregnancy itself, tends to begin rapidly, coinciding with feelings of responsibility for the fetus and tends to focus on the well being of the fetus or newborn.
Research into the mindset of pregnant women has revealed that unwanted, intrusive and strange thoughts about a stressful event is normal, even for pregnancies. OCD’s nasty trick is that the more you try not to think unsettling thoughts, the more you focus on them. And compulsive actions designed to mediate obsessive thoughts lower anxiety, but it doesn’t work in the long run. They simply lead to more obsessive actions and thoughts by the mother.
Symptomatic psychiatric illness like OCD is associated with impulsive behaviors, substance abuse, inadequate nutrition, and poor prenatal care. Some notable results have been preterm birth, lower birth weights and smaller head circumference.
Effects of OCD are depression, avoidance and fear behaviors that present problems caring for the newborn, problems bonding with the infant because of avoidance behavior and problems in many relationships surrounding the mother because of anxiety.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Women who have a history of trauma such as rape or childhood abuse often show symptoms of PTSD. Because of a traumatic past, pregnant women tend to avoid health care practitioners, often missing out on prenatal-care benefits because as a result. There could also be problems with body exposure for physical exams and disassociation, flashbacks or an excessive need to control situations in an attempt to control anxiety. Anxiety is often paired with depression, and they are obvious components of PTSD.
If you are pregnant and some of these symptoms hit close to hime, don’t despair. Psychiatric problems strike few and far between for women with no history of psychological issues. But there is always a chance that with hormonal changes, psychological changes may follow as well.