Treatments to help prevent psychosis in women who have just given birth.

There is a small percentage of women for whom giving birth leads to psychosis. Postnatal psychosis affects one to two in every 1000 new mothers and is almost always a mood disorder accompanied by loss of contact with reality, hearing voices and seeing things (hallucinations), having strange beliefs (delusions), severe thought disturbance, and abnormal behaviour. It can be a life-threatening condition with an abrupt onset within a month of childbirth.

Read the full summary here: http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD009991/treatments-to-help-prevent-psychosis-in-women-who-have-just-given-birth

From a service user perspective (SUPER), it is surprising that there is so little research on women’s mental health just after childbirth, particularly as postnatal psychosis is potentially life- threatening.  There is risk of suicide, child neglect and abuse and even in some extreme cases killing the child.  News coverage has highlighted the devastating story of a mother with severe postnatal depression who smothered her 10-day-old son after her medication was taken away (Steven Morris, The Guardian, Friday 12^th November, See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/nov/12/mother-smothered-baby-son-court).  Recent news has also centred on a pregnant mother who killed her three children before committing suicide (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2309426/Lowestoft-deaths-Father-Craig-McLelland-pays-tribute-3-children-killed-pregnant-mother-Fiona-Anderson.html).  This makes the prevention of postnatal psychosis even more urgent and important.