Depression During Pregnancy: Symptoms, Causes, Treatment

InfoHealthyLife.Com - During pregnancy women will often experience health problems such as foot swelling, stomach pain, and bleeding. Things like this are common in women so prevention is often done. In addition to physical problems, actually women are also at risk of experiencing depression during pregnancy or prenatal depression.

Well, so that we all better understand the psychological disorders that arise during pregnancy such as prenatal depression, see the full review below.

Overview of depression during pregnancy

Pregnancy is something that many women really dream of. However, pregnancy also sometimes brings fear, stress, and eventually depression. According to The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), around 14-23 percent of pregnant women struggle with depression until labor arrives.

Depression during pregnancy is a mood or mood disorder. This disorder occurs because there is a change in chemicals or specifically occurs due to hormones. This change causes interference with the body and psychology. In certain conditions depression can cause interference not only in the mother, but also in the fetus.

Depressive symptoms during pregnancy

Women who are pregnant can be said to be depressed if the signs below appear for 2 weeks or more. So, pay close attention to be able to recognize and be more alert.

• Experiencing excessive sadness when there are no problems. If this condition continues, you cannot just ignore it.
• The concentration will decrease quite a lot. This condition makes a woman difficult to do anything well especially those who are still working.
• Having a sleep disorder. Women who are depressed can sleep easily or otherwise have a hard time sleeping. One of these conditions will interfere physically and psychologically.
• Loss of interest in carrying out previously interesting daily activities. For example, you initially loved watching dramas on television. However, because the conditions that could not be explained, the desire just disappeared.
• Bad feelings arise such as the desire to commit suicide to feel hopeless. If this feeling has arisen, immediately ask for help from the closest person.
• Worry about many things. This anxiety will make you unable to do anything.
• Feeling guilty about many things but not his own fault. This condition will trigger excessive sadness.
• The eating habits will change whether they become less or more in more than 2 weeks.

Causes of depression during pregnancy

Depression during pregnancy does not just happen without cause. In general there are several things that cause this condition.

• Problems with couples because of work at home or other disputes. This condition causes pregnant women to become acutely depressed and finally feel alone.
• Having a history of depression from parents like mothers in the past who were both depressed during pregnancy. Although not always, this opportunity is big enough to trigger a depression condition during pregnancy.
• Have had a miscarriage before or many times. This condition causes women to be panicky during pregnancy. This excessive panic condition is dangerous for his health.
• There are complications in pregnancy.
• Have experienced trauma or violence while pregnant.

Fetal disorders due to the mother experiencing depression

Depression will directly cause interference with pregnant women. This disorder can be a change in diet and sleep. Pregnant women can lack nutrition in the body and excessive stress. Because the baby gets food from the mother, if the body experiences interference, the fetus will also experience interference.

Babies who are in the womb of women with stress conditions will rarely experience movement. Movable babies are a sign that the disorder is quite large and must be feared. Therefore, improve your diet and also do a variety of ways for depression to disappear so that the baby in the womb does not experience interference.

Handling depression during pregnancy

As described above, depression during pregnancy has a lot of side effects, especially in the mother and also the fetus she is pregnant with. Well, to overcome this problem, the handling below must be done.

• Form a support group or group support. By forming this pressure can be minimized. You can support each other with people who have the same problem. By having friends, loneliness can be prevented.
• Using psychotherapy. Your doctor or therapist will use several appropriate methods to deal with depression problems.
• Lamp therapy. This therapy is used to manipulate hormones in the body.
• Use certain drugs that relieve tension so that bad thoughts that always interfere do not appear.

In addition to using some of the methods above, the condition of depression during pregnancy can also be overcome by using the following methods.

• Exercise regularly even though the intensity is not high. Walking every morning or evening is enough.
• Paying attention to diet every day and must be fulfilled. Healthy and nutritious foods will control the mood of your body so that you are not easily angry or moody.
• Get enough rest. Pregnant women must sleep at least 6-8 hours every day and should not be less than that. If you sleep until the hours are reduced, the possibility of a disruption will be large.
• Do acupuncture if you dare to do it.
• Eating foods with high omega-3 content. You can also use supplements so that depression can decrease.