Originally published August 19 2005
Health advocates seek to raise treatment awareness for post-partum depression
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Health officials in the U.S. are attempting to raise the awareness for post-partum depression among doctors and pregnant women.
WITH hundreds of thousands of women suffering from post-partum depression each year in the United States, health advocates are working to bring the critical need for screening to the attention of physicians, pregnant women and new mothers.
Depression during and after pregnancy affects an estimated 18 percent of expectant and new moms, or at least 400,000 new cases per year in the United States, according to Amelia Cobb, MPH, the foundation's executive director.
The foundation declared May 11 the first national screening day for postpartum depression and launched the hotline and Web site, which offer information on treatments, support groups and a self-assessment test for symptoms of such depression.
"This is the first site we found where the mom could take a self-test to just start to understand or see if she's having any problems with depression," Cobb said.
The purpose of the test, developed using the clinical methods to diagnose postpartum depression, is to create self-awareness for the mother, she said.
Teaching doctors and nurses to identify the warning signs of depression in pregnant women and new mothers is also an important tool to ensure women with maternal depression are identified and treated, Cobb said.
"(Health care providers) have been more or less receptive to this because a lot of clinicians have not been trained to diagnose and treat post-partum depression," Cobb said.
It's usually the mother (who notices the problem) and she's not saying anything, or it's (the woman's) mother," who recognizes the symptoms of depression in her daughter.
The Safe Motherhood Working Group, a coalition of HHS agencies that works to improve maternal health, recently requested a report from HHS's Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality on depression during and after pregnancy.
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