(VORNews) – According to a new Swedish study, women who acquire depression during or after pregnancy are much more likely to die prematurely. Women who acquired “perinatal” depression were twice as likely to die as women who did not have the mood condition, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal on January 10.
Researchers discovered that they are six times more likely to commit suicide than women who do not suffer from this type of depression. According to the findings, the risk of mortality from pregnancy-related depression peaks in the month following a woman’s diagnosis, but it can stay high for over two decades afterward.
“I believe that our study clearly shows that these women have an elevated mortality risk and that this is an extremely important issue,” said study co-author Qing Shen, a Karolinska Institute associate researcher.
Depression affects 10% to 20% of pregnancy women
Perinatal depression is rather frequent, affecting 10% to 20% of pregnant women, according to the researchers’ background notes. Researchers examined data from over 86,500 Swedish women diagnosed with perinatal depression, which can develop during pregnancy or up to a year after childbirth.
Six to eight weeks after giving birth, all Swedish women are asked to complete a screening instrument designed to detect indications of depression. The researchers compared those women to almost 865,000 women of the same age who had given birth in the same year, between 2001 and 2018, but had not had pregnancy-related depression.
The death risk was highest for women diagnosed with depression after childbirth, corroborating the findings of previous studies of postpartum depression, researchers found.
However, the current study discovered an increased risk of death in women who acquire depression during pregnancy, an area that has received little attention, according to the researchers. According to the findings, the risk was the same whether a woman had psychiatric disorders before pregnancy.
“Our recommendation is therefore not to discontinue effective psychiatric treatment during pregnancy,” Shen said in a Karolinska news release. Researchers discovered that women with lower education or incomes were more likely to be diagnosed with prenatal depression.
“One hypothesis is that these women seek help differently or were not offered screening services postpartum to the same extent, which means that their depression develops and worsens once it has been detected,” said senior researcher Donghao Lu, an assistant professor at Karolinska.
“Our view is that these women are particularly vulnerable and should be the focus of future interventions.” The good news is that there are currently effective strategies for recognizing and treating pregnancy-related depression, Lu added. They just need to be used.
“We need to stress how important it is that all pregnant women are offered screening, both postpartum and antepartum, and provided necessary, evidence-based care and support,” Lu went on to say.
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