Study Indicates Higher Incidence Of Childbirth-Related PTSD Than Previously Thought

�Nearly unrivaled in 10 U.S. women who have given birth recently meet the formal criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from childbearing, according to a survey released this week by the nonprofit maternity care group Childbirth Connection, the Wall Street Journal reports. Some aesculapian experts say that PTSD, most commonly linked to people wHO have experienced violent events, can as well be triggered by a painful or complicated labor and delivery in which a woman believes she or her child power die. PTSD can congeal in immediately or months after a traumatic event. According to the Journal, the condition often occurs when somebody has experient an event that includes actual or threatened sober injury or death and evokes intense fear or a intuitive feeling of helplessness. Symptoms of the experimental condition can include anxiety, flashbacks and a "numbness to daily life sentence," the Journal reports.

For the survey, titled "New Mothers Speak Out," Childbirth Connection commissioned Harris Interactive to screen 900 U.S. mothers using an established PSTD screening instrument. Nine percent of the women surveyed screened positive for all the criteria of PTSD outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and 18% of participants showed some signs of the condition, according to the theme. Researchers renowned that most women enrolled in the survey wHO experienced PTSD and other depression symptoms did non seek professional help. According to the Journal, the rate of PTSD among mothers has not been studied extensively, but separate studies conducted outside the U.S. estimated that betwixt 1.5% and 5.9% of mothers experience the condition. PTSD is thought to be far less vernacular in mothers than postpartum depression, which affects roughly 15% of mothers, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

Health precaution providers trust the increasing number of obstetric procedures used in labor and delivery could be playing a role in PTSD. Cheryl Beck -- a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Nursing, world Health Organization served as an consultant for the study -- said the mothers reportage signs of PTSD had a higher rate of medical intervention and were more likely to draw feeling helpless in a threatening environment. A history of sexual abuse or other injury also potty increase a woman's danger of experiencing PTSD related to vaginal birth, the Journal reports.

According to the Journal, the survey's results ar "likely to add fuel to a debate roughly how to better key out and process maternal mode disorders and whether widespread, systemic screening is warranted." New Jersey in 2006 passed a law requiring women to be screened for hazard of low after existence discharged following childbirth, as well as at the first postnatal doctor's visit. Other states, including Illinois and Texas, have passed laws to increase educational awareness of postpartum mental conditions.

Federal legislation (S 1375) that would fund research into postpartum mood disorders and the effects of covering for the conditions failed to make the Senate floor last�month as voice of a legislative packet (S 3297), but supporters believe the bill could be reconsidered in the fall. Opponents of the measure have said the bill could lead to increased "drugging of mothers." Shari Lusskin, director of reproductive psychological medicine at New York University Medical Center, said many aspects of PTSD ar not full understood, specially childbirth-related PTSD. She aforementioned, "We don't want to overmedicalize a normal section of human development. Just because you had a traumatic nascency, doesn't bastardly you'll get PTSD" (Zimmerman, Wall Street Journal, 8/5).


Reprinted with kind permission from hTTP://www.nationalpartnership.org. You can persuasion the entire Daily Women's Health Policy Report, lookup the archives, or sign up for email manner of speaking here. The Daily Women's Health Policy Report is published by the National Partnership for Women and families.

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