Social Support for Mothers' Mental Health

Virtually every study shows that having a happy and healthy mama outweighs the risk of taking psychiatric medication. There are a few exceptions to the rule, specifically Depakote. This is completely contradictory to the recommendations from 10-20 years ago which were to discontinue all medications, but we had virtually no data with which to make recommendations. Thankfully there is now an ever growing body of research on women’s mental health. Hopefully this means even more treatment options for women’s mental health!

Medications cannot make up for a lack of social support, but they can help mitigate for it. Women with a lack of social support are at a greatly increased risk of postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum ocd, postpartum ptsd and postpartum psychosis. Women with good social support can still develop these conditions, but never doubt the benefits of having positive people in your life.

Mamas of COVID babies were particularly prone to being ripped of their social support and experienced higher rates of postpartum syndromes. Before the pandemic the rate of postpartum depression was 10-20% worldwide. During the pandemic, the rate of postpartum depression was 54%! Lack of social support was not the only mediating factor in this increase, but likely played a major role in this increased risk.

Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10648077/

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