A Maternal Mental Health Task Force is forming in Middle Tennessee.
Meeting Details are:
Where: Fellowship Church, Murfreesboro, TN
When: 7:00p.m. CT
Who: Consumer Advocates & Professionals
Contact: Marcie Ramirez, PSI Co-Coordinator
email: ppdhelp@ymail.com
phone: 615439-8414
Please share this information with anyone who may be interested and able to attend!
Heather Rupp, an Assistant Scientist with The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction, has received a grant from NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) for a study focusing on the mechanisms of Postpartum Depression.
Great, you say. But what exactly will she be studying?
“My colleagues and I will be investigating whether oxytocin, a hormone that reduces the physiological stress response and promotes social bonding, buffers new mothers against depression through its influences on their neural responsiveness to stress, and whether this process is disrupted in some way in women suffering from postpartum depression.”
Well that answers that. How will they be examining if this process is disrupted?
Using fMRI technology, Rupp and her colleagues will compare brain activity in the three groups in response to a series of images. Some of the women will also receive an oxytocin nasal spray.
Now for the who.
The study will involve three groups of women — new mothers who are not depressed, new mothers with PPD, and women who have never given birth.
Why bother examining all of this? What’s the hypothesis?
The prefrontal-limbic system is a part of the brain that may be involved in maternal behavior. New mothers generally show changes in the responsiveness of the prefrontal-limbic system to infants in ways that differ from women who have not just given birth. New mothers may also show less sensitivity to stress. Additionally, women who suffer depression outside of the postpartum period show heightened responsiveness of the prefrontal-limbic system in response to stress, suggesting an overlap in circuits critical to maternal behavior and those altered by depression. It is unknown whether changes in this prefrontal limbic system are related to postpartum depression (PPD).
The mechanism for altered neural responsiveness in the postpartum period may involve oxytocin, which also occurs at higher levels in new mothers. It is hypothesized that this makes the new mother less affected, generally, by negative stressors from the outside world, but more responsive to her infant.
But wouldn’t the oxytocin levels be different when comparing breastfeeding vs. bottle feeding moms? Will that relationship dynamic be examined during this study?
I had this very question when I first read the study and immediately emailed Heather to ask if this would be included. Her response?
It is a great question- you would expect differences in oxytocin, neural responsiveness to stress, and prevalence of depression in breast versus bottle feeding women.
Initially this comparison was part of the study design. This turned out to be just too complicated for one study, however.
Comparing so many groups of women would be beyond the scope of the funding we received. So we cut out the bottle-feeding women in this initial study. Based on what we learn from the upcoming study, we hope to then follow-up with questions such as bottle versus breast feeding moms.
Any of the above information in quotes (with exception of the breastfeeding comment which was via email with Heather Rupp) was taken directly from a press release from Indiana University which can be accessed by clicking here.
Hi Lauren! It’s kind of funny how self-identified with postpartum issues a person can become! I know I’m singing to the choir here to say that PPD advocates are a passionate bunch! Along with my obsession, avocation, I am the mom to two older children–they’re 15 & 20 now, although I have no idea how they grew up so fast. You know how that is. And all my cherished skills I learned from and with the two of them. We grew up together, in many ways. We’re all a bunch of computer nuts, and are sitting in a 10 x 10 room on our own computers right this minute. It’s more fun than housework.
It’s been over 14 years, so I tend to be a bit removed from the experience now. Maybe that’s encouraging to moms going through it now–knowing that eventually PPD won’t feel like something you live and breathe every. single. day. Why I described it as a mystery/horror movie was that, even though I’d probably been depressed in the past, I’d never been to the depths like I was with PPD. I’d also never been so sleep deprived. It was a sleep deprivation due to depression, not because my kids weren’t sleeping through the night. They were. I was too anxious to sleep; it was that kind of anxious/depression. And that was part of why it made it so hard to figure out what was going on with me. I didn’t feel “depressed”. I felt, like so many other moms have described, like I was “going crazy”. It was a mystery to me what was wrong. With all that came intrusive thoughts that were very gory. And they weren’t thoughts so much as very vivid images. They scared me and made me think someone would take my kids away from me, and me away from society forever–pretty much a horror.
I…actually, …I waited until my daughter was around eight months old before I started sliding into that PPD pit. It was partly due to her big brother going off to kindergarten with all his little friends we’d seen every week for …4+ years. But kindergarten is somehow a big shift anyway, and can put moms off-balance for a bit. Or maybe it’s just us moms who’ve been on the PPD ride are more sensitive to changes. Anyway, by mid-October (6, 7 weeks into kindergarten) I was losing it. But no way was I admitting to it. Although I tried to look stuff up (1994–not much of an internet to surf then) I couldn’t find anything that described what I was experiencing.
Finally my husband took me for “a Sunday drive” to the ER, where they kept and observed me for a while. I stayed at the hospital for a bit and, well, my peers there were very interesting. The main thing was though that I finally got on a medication (Zoloft) and it started working. I began to feel a lot like myself again within a couple of weeks.
They were great. My in-laws had dd while I was in the hospital. Dh had ds at home, and took him to school each day. Afterwards, I stayed with my in-laws for more support and to get up to some kind of speed again. There were other times they stepped in in BIG ways over the next year too–I don’t know what we would have done without them.
Name three things that made you laugh today.
Still occasionally wondering if we bonded well, if I messed the kids up for life, etc. But I imagine other moms who didn’t go through PPD wonder this as well. Also challenging… the age of 13. EEYuh…challenging. The least challenging–the easiest–is loving my beautiful, vibrant kids every day!
The beach soothes me. Body boarding especially, but just getting in the ocean water balances me in emotional and visceral ways.
It is partly because I didn’t get the name for the exciting journey I had until five or so years later–Oprah had Marie Osmond on, talking about her book about some illness called “postpartum depression”. I sat there pointing at the TV again and again. “That was ME! That was ME!!” I finally had a name for it. I Googled and found online information and bulletin boards where I then made myself at home. It was because I could find nothing here to help with PPD, and with my experience on the boards that I decided to become an Area Coordinator with Postpartum Support International. Might as well make some lemonade from the PPD lemons.
How empowering is doing what I do? What I’ve done for 5 years now is telephone support, email support, a weekly support group, and some speaking. –the support calls, email and the group empower the parents and are validating for both of us. Speaking to groups still feels empowering; our recovered moms/volunteers get a chance to speak at various events. I remember my first time too–it was empowering. People, providers, wanted to know what it is like, what could be done, how would you know. And they listened. There’s a threshold you cross when you speak publicly about your experience. What a great question Lauren. I have to tell my therapist how much it meant to me that she asked me to speak a number of times. It allowed me to step out of my shame and into myself.
They are around when I’ve been on phone calls with moms or providers, so they do hear my end of conversations occasionally. It’s just a part of our lives. I weave information in to our conversations when opportunities arrive, much like I have with sex education. Dd just had one of those “pretend baby” exercises where she had to care for a hard-boiled egg for 2 weeks as if it were her baby. Of course I wove in some PPD talk!
It would really depend on the situation. I used to be tempted to pass out information to every new parent I saw, just so they could avoid the journey I endured. Barring accosting new parents in the grocery aisles, what I would say though is that you’re not alone if you have a PMD, they are very treatable, they are not your fault and that honestly, I found a gift in my experience, eventually. Maybe it was my biggest experience of “whatever doesn’t kill you outright makes you stronger.” And in the case of PPD, as many mothers say, it loosens your judgments, revealing compassion.
Aloha!
Welcome to Mother’s Day.
Today we’re taking it back.
We’re giving it meaning, heart, compassion, soul, and spirit.
Filling it with education, awareness, and taking it back from the florists.
Yeah, flowers are nice.
But 24 open letters on the topic of Mom’s Mental Health from experts, survivors, and more is a whole lot nicer!
Why?
Well – for starters, they last longer, don’t require water, and truly feed the soul.
Get her flowers if you must. But have the printer ready because every hour on the hour, Postpartum Progress will be posting an open letter from an expert or survivor. It’s gonna be an amazing day.
"Speak up" by Aaron Michael Brown @ flickr
(I received an email from Natalie this morning informing me that her interview had been rescheduled to air tomorrow instead! Tune in!)
Natalie Dombrowski, author of Back to You, Founder of S.P.E.A.K., and fellow blogger, will be on-air with Chicago Public Radio this Thursday Friday at 9:00a Central time.
She’ll be sharing her experience with PPD, anxiety, and motherhood just in time for Mother’s Day.
“I know that the more we talk about our experience the more mothers out there seem to relate and feel the burden of isolation, guilt, and shame lessen.” says Natalie about her upcoming interview. AMEN to that!
If you’re in Chicago, you can listen live on WBEZ 91.5 FM. If not, you can listen online by going to the WBEZ website and clicking the “Listen Now” button at the top of the home page.
Thanks Natalie, for continuing to share your experience. With the comfort of your courageous voice, many mothers will no longer feel alone.