What is postpartum depression?

CEBU, Philippines – The recent news of the kidnapping of a baby at a government hospital created quite a stir in the community. Many were shocked to know that such an incident could happen in a guarded establishment, aside from the fact that the act was perpetrated in the presence of so many people. New parents, for their part, are horrified, realizing that such a thing could actually happen to anyone.

The suspect was a 26-year-old employee, who first insisted that the baby was really hers. She gave birth inside a taxicab, she said. Later, though, she confessed that she only wanted to have the baby in order to save the loosening relationship between her and her live-in partner, also her officemate. She wanted to make him believe that the baby was their own.

The woman thought that with "their" baby around, her lover would not leave her. Such seemingly simple plan that resulted in a big scandal. But mental health experts believed that there was more to this woman's story than ordinary people would think.

It was learned that the woman had actually been pregnant - but had a miscarriage. Health professionals suspected she was suffering from some kind of ailment that emerged after giving birth. Thus, her sense of judgment was probably muddled.

A most common after-birth illness is postpartum depression. But what is postpartum depression? The website www.attn.com explains:

Postpartum depression is a form of mental illness. Between 8 and 19 percent of women experience postpartum depression, but these women feel comfortable talking about it.

The condition differs from the "baby blues," which refers to temporary feelings of worry, unhappiness, and fatigue that immediately follow the birth of a baby. The "baby blues" is so common that up to 80 percent of mothers experience it.

Rather, postpartum depression is an elevated and prolonged sense of depression. It is a condition that causes women to experience feelings of intense sadness, anxiety, and exhaustion, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. In more severe cases, women report experiencing a total disconnect from their baby and possess intrusive thoughts about harming themselves or their babies.

Many women find it quite a challenge to speak out about their depression, because of society's tendency to idealize motherhood. Most mothers believe that they should be joyful. But when a woman experiences counter-intuitive thoughts and feelings toward her child and motherhood, the shame and guilt she feels prevents her from seeking treatment. Such a woman may try to downplay these thoughts, to no avail.

"It's the biggest obstacle to treatment," according to Wendy N. Davis, executive director of Postpartum Support International. "Women put so much pressure on themselves to be perfect that even when they find themselves having difficult symptoms, they put pressure on themselves to get over it."

Some 40 percent of women who experienced the most severe symptoms of postpartum depression did not seek treatment, according to a 2014 BabyCenter survey. The main reasons these women failed to seek help, according to the Huffington Post are: not wanting to be labeled mentally ill, feeling guilty and embarrassed by their depressed feelings, feeling their condition was not serious enough, and wanting to handle the problem on their own.

"We live in a culture that doesn't embrace a woman saying out loud, 'You know what? I don't feel like being a mom right now,'" Karen Kleiman, founder and director of the Postpartum Stress Center in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in the US. "Our society doesn't really support women the way they do in other parts of the world, quite frankly. [You] are expected to have your baby, get up, go back to work or make dinner, keep going. We don't really have a postpartum culture that's very well developed here."

Now, this information about post-partum depression runs opposite to the behavior of the woman who figure in the recent kidnapping case in Cebu City.  It is not that she wants to let go of her baby. Instead, she wants a baby so much that she went to the extent of stealing somebody else's child.

An earlier report in The Freeman has quoted the chief of the center for behavioral sciences at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center as saying that the suspect must be subjected to thorough evaluation, because she might actually be suffering from mental illnesses. The doctor enumerated possible mental illnesses - severe psycho-pathology or delusion, postpartum psychosis, and mood problem, among others.

Whatever the eventual finding, one thing is clear: Childbirth can be so physically and emotionally stressful that a mother risks her own wellbeing in the process.