Science / Medicine : Postpartum Blues Can Be Predicted, Experts Say

Postpartum blues, the mild depression that affects many women within the first 10 days after the delivery of a baby, is a distinct clinical condition rather than just a generalized response to stressful events, according to researchers from the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Psychologist Michael O’Hara and his colleagues reported Sunday in the Archives of General Psychiatry that a woman’s likelihood of developing postpartum blues can be reliably predicted.

Postpartum blues are characterized by a general unhappiness, wide swings in mood, crying, anxiety, insomnia, poor appetite and irritability.

O’Hara and his colleagues studied 182 women, recruited from Iowa hospitals and clinics, from the second trimester of pregnancy onward. Women most likely to suffer the blues had a family or personal history of depression, suffered from depression during menses, made poor social adjustments--with work, friends and extended family--during pregnancy, and were more likely to suffer stress after delivery, such as health problems with the infant. The women also had unusually high levels of estrogen during the late stages of pregnancy.

The researchers also found that fully one-quarter of the women with the blues subsequently developed full-blown depression.