Essential Reads: Postpartum Depression, Is it Unipolar or Bipolar?
Vigilance is required in screening women who present with postpartum depression; a subset of women who screen positive for depression may actually have bipolar disorder.
Vigilance is required in screening women who present with postpartum depression; a subset of women who screen positive for depression may actually have bipolar disorder.
Women with medical, psychiatric, and obstetric risk factors should be closely followed within pregnancy and the postpartum.
Lithium use during pregnancy was associated with an increased risk of preterm birth and large for gestational age infants.
Although the last decade has brought increased awareness of and interest in postpartum mood and anxiety disorders, our understanding of the etiology of this most severe form of postpartum mental illness remains elusive.
Functional MRI revealed no differences in brain structure of white matter integrity in lithium-exposed versus non-lithium-exposed children born to mothers with bipolar spectrum disorder.
Dr. Lee S. Cohen, Director of the Ammon-Pinizzotto Center for Women's Mental Health at Massachusetts General Hospital, recently shared his insights on the long-term behavioral follow-up of children exposed to mood stabilizers and antidepressants with Ob.Gyn News on August 16,
A recent review and meta-analysis found that upwards of 20% of women with no history of psychiatric illness experience their first bipolar-spectrum mood episode during the perinatal period.
Women with postpartum psychosis are at risk for recurrent illness, but we have limited data regarding risk factors for recurrence.
Second-generation antipsychotic medications associated with high metabolic risk (quetiapine, olanzapine, and clozapine) were associated with increased risk of gestational diabetes; other antipsychotics were not.
More that half of women with bipolar disorder relapsed during pregnancy.