Postnatal depression

Hayden Panettiere is taking some time for herself after checking into a treatment facility for postpartum depression following the birth of her first child, Kaya Evodokia.

Motherhood is what you make of it. It requires nothing short of 100% mental focus and it is your grandest “project” that you will ever undertake.

Each year in Australia, about 40,000 women experience postnatal depression by the time their baby is three months old, yet more than 50 per cent of mothers with postnatal depression don’t seek help because they worry that they will be seen as a failure, don’t know the signs of depression or are concerned about passing […]

New mums have been warned about the dangers of post-natal depression for years, but new research suggests they are just as susceptible to another mental illness: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. A Northwestern University study found that 11 per cent of new mothers develop OCD, as many as those affected by post-natal depression. Researchers from the Chicago […]

Several months after the birth of her baby, my friend was admitted to a facility for mothers with post-natal depression. She stayed for a few weeks, her nearly one-year-old taken from her to help manage her feelings of utter helplessness and exhaustion. Her treatment made things worse for a while: she was forced to wean […]

One in seven Australian mothers experience postnatal depression, and thousands more suffer in silence. For Jackie Hall, that suffering culminated in a terrifying incident which saw a kitchen knife narrowly miss her two-year-old son’s head. Jackie started feeling depressed after the birth of her first son, and the feelings only intensified when her second was […]