In a recent article, Margaret Spinelli, MD describes a proposal to the DSM-V committee of the American Psychiatric Association in 2020 arguing for the inclusion of postpartum psychosis as a unique diagnosis based on the cognitive disorganization that accompanies postpartum psychotic symptoms. The article clearly lays out the rationale for the inclusion of postpartum psychosis… Read More »
Essential Reads: Recognizing Postpartum Psychosis Because postpartum psychosis is a relatively rare event, we do not have as much information on this illness as we have on postpartum depression. In addition, most of the literature we have on postpartum psychosis is not new. A few years back, the American Journal of Psychiatry published an excellent… Read More »
In Brief: Postpartum Depression Common in COVID-Positive Women Separated from Their Newborns Soon after the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended temporarily separating newborns from mothers who tested positive for COVID-19 immediately after delivery. In a retrospective cohort study of 224 new mothers delivering at a New York hospital between March 18… Read More »
According to a recent analysis of national data by the Centers for Disease Control, the number of pregnant women with opioid use disorder (as documented at the time of delivery) more than quadrupled from 1999 through 2014. While many women are able to decrease or abstain from opioid use during pregnancy, the first year postpartum… Read More »
When obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) occurs during the postpartum period, women may experience typical OCD symptoms related to contamination and cleaning, catastrophic thoughts and checking, or symmetry and ordering. However, many women with postpartum OCD, as well as those with other postpartum mood and anxiety disorders, have intrusive, ego-dystonic thoughts of harming the infant. These intrusive… Read More »
As we enter into the Fall of 2020, it is clear that we will be dealing with COVID-19 into the next year. We have learned so much about the novel coronavirus over the last six months, but it is still something most of us worry about. Even in the best of times, women who are… Read More »