OPPapers.com

Postpartum Depression

In May of 2000, Andrea Yates confessed to drowning her five young children. At the time of her psychosis, Andrea believed that she was doing the best thing not only for herself, but also for her children. Along with the emotional world wind that Andrea was going through, she also had the belief that she was not a good mother and that her five children were going to the consequences of her mistakes. She was under an extreme spell of Postpartum Depression. This was her defense, and in 2006, Andrea was found not guilty of murder by reasons of insanity.
Postpartum Depression can directly affect anyone, no matter the gender, including friends and family, and not excluding the new born infant.
Scientists have been investigating the effects of postpartum depression, a mood disorder found after the birth of a new baby, in women as well as men. The symptoms may be different between men and women and the diagnosis of this disease may be hard to discover. The results from this study are not only astonishing but also underestimated. This is a significant problem found in the United States (Paulson, Dauber, & Leiferman, 2006) that needs to be properly diagnosed by a doctor or psychologist before the disease gets out of hand.
Studies have found that 10 percent of men, out of approximately 5,000 two parent families, and 14 percent of women became depressed after the birth of their new baby (Paulson et al., 2006). The findings of fathers being depressed were underestimated. Over time the symptoms became more obvious that women were not the only ones affected by this disease. Denise Mann (2006) reported that the number of fathers with postpartum depression is twice as high as depressed males in the general population. There are thousands of diagnosed diseases every year. Postpartum depression is one of the highest diagnosed diseases; see Figure 1, compared to deaths from cancer. The levels for men are just as traumatizing, if not diagnosed and treated properly,...