Postpartum psychosis is a serious mental illness that a few women suffer suddenly days or weeks after the birth of their babies. Hallucinations, delusions, and confusions are the 3 distinctive symptoms of this disease along with mania or high mood, depression, and major changes in behavior as symptoms that can vary from person to person and that can also change rapidly. If you understand that you or someone you know are developing postpartum psychosis or puerperal psychosis, contact a psychiatrist as soon as possible.
Signs and Symptoms of Postpartum Psychosis
Signs of postpartum psychosis generally start within a couple of weeks after you give birth to your baby, and this may sometimes take up to 84 days to become visible or noticeable. This disease causes noticeable changes in mood and behavior, such as manic, depression, or psychotic. Some symptoms of postpartum psychosis are sudden and extreme mood swings, being aggressive, violent, and very agitated, speaking in a disordered manner, having irrational or delusional thoughts or beliefs, an altered sense of reality, hallucinations, and changes in sense perception. Other symptoms are feeling paranoid, unable to concentrate, being unable to sleep and sometimes for a whole day at a stretch, thinking or planning to harm yourself or your baby, and responding abnormally to the child. If you notice the above symptoms in you, you will need professional help.
Diagnosis of Postpartum Psychosis
As postpartum psychosis is a mental disease or psychiatric condition, experts cannot diagnose it in a lab or diagnostic center and clinica maternidad for surrogate mother. However, to diagnose postpartum psychosis, psychiatrists will observe you for psychiatric assessment after you admit to a hospital. That is, only a psychiatrist can diagnose whether you have the condition of postpartum psychosis.
Treatment of Postpartum Psychosis
To start treatment of postpartum psychosis, first, you will need to admit to a hospital. There, you will remain safe and secured, and the doctors will be able to monitor you as closely as required. Based on your symptoms of postpartum psychosis and the way you respond to the treatment of the doctors, the first phase of the treatment may need several weeks to several months to complete. For your full recovery from this illness, you will need more time and further treatment there. There are 3 major options among options for the treatment of postpartum psychosis. First, the psychiatrist will recommend particular medications like antidepressants, mood stabilizers, and antipsychotic drugs that will help you with antipsychotic symptoms such as hallucinations. Second, they may use electroconvulsive therapy on you, which is a process that stimulates the neurons in the brain with an electric current to treat mania, psychosis, and severe depression, if they think it is necessary. Third, psychological behavior therapies like Cognitive Behavior Therapy CBT may also be a part of your treatment of postpartum psychosis. However, if you are a surrogate mother or madri surrogate you might follow the same ways.
Duties of Your Nearest and Dearest Ones
Your husband and the other family members should keep an eye on you throughout your postpartum period. If any of them notice the signs and symptoms of postpartum psychosis, they should take an emergency step ASAP. Any delay or neglect will ultimately cause the condition to worsen which will surely bring more suffering for the mother, baby, partner, and the entire family as the recovery time and process will become longer and more complex.
Postpartum depression can be frightening, not only to the mother of a newborn but also to her partner and the other family member. Although it typically lasts for weeks or longer than that, patients recover fully through proper treatment. This one is not so common as baby blues or postnatal depression, while statistics show that only one out of every thousand women who have a baby has suffered from postpartum psychosis.
