Hawthor allerted me to a new campaign to screen all moms for post partum emotional illness.
Read her excellent post and check out the comments below, they provide a compelling conversation for where we are with education and current myths in the minds of many women regarding what causes post partum illness.
My long time readers know that I had a post partum psychosis after the birth of my first baby….

This is a picture of me with my oldest daughter Michelle when she was ten days old. I did not become manic until we moved when she was six weeks old. After a month of mania, little social support, and very little sleep, I dropped over the cliff into psychosis and was hospitalized for six weeks.

Here is a picture of me in suicidal depression over a year later. I had been court ordered to eat Haldol, Lithium, and Stelazine. This picture was taken after Prozac was added to my chemical cocktail and a few days before I was hospitalized again, this time for suicidal depression. I am convinced the Prozac tipped me over into suicidal thinking.

Mothering Magazine published an excellent article on Post Partum Psychosis this past year. My story was featured as a side bar article in the mag, and recently they published the account on their web site.
Here is a link to it.
And the text of the piece:
Pregnancy after Psychosis
By Sarah R. Fields
May/June 2007 – Issue 142
Article: Losing It
Side Bar: Postpartum Mood Disorders Guide

During my months of recovery, when I began reading about perinatal mood disorders, I came across a case study of a woman who had survived postpartum psychosis. As I read entries from the diary kept by Jenny Hatch while she was in the hospital, I finally felt as if someone understood what I had experienced. Jenny’s confidence and wisdom empowered me during my healing. Her story gave me the strength and the knowledge to believe I could still have a baby and remain well—I would have entered my third pregnancy with great hesi-tation and fear had I not first spoken with her. When I decided to tell my own story (Losing It), Jenny agreed to let me tell hers, too.1-3

Jenny Hatch suffered postpartum psychosis when she was 21, following the birth of her first child. She spent a month in a psychotic and manic state before being hospitalized for several weeks. Since then, she has given birth to four more children, with no relapse. During each post-partum period, Jenny has effectively employed natural preventive methods to stave off mood disorders.

In the first months following her psychosis, Jenny saw 12 different doctors, all male. About four months after her hospitalization, she met a female psychiatrist, who treated her with natural progesterone. Jenny said the hormone treatment returned her to a state of equilibrium. “I felt it was the first major step in healing.”

The closest Jenny has come to another psychotic episode was after the birth of her fourth child, who was taken to the NICU. Jenny missed three nights’ sleep and “could feel the tidal wave. I was going to crash into psychosis.” Her husband brought her a liquid calcium-magnesium supplement, which she took along with vitamin B complex to nourish her body. The natural minerals and vitamins were enough to allow her to achieve deep sleep. After the birth of each of her babies, Jenny has gone to extremes to protect her sleep. “When I have a new baby, I do nothing. I let my house go nuts so I can nap. I can feel when the mania is building. It has always been connected to sleep deprivation.” From that experience, Jenny has come to believe that emergency rooms and mental hospitals should greet psychotic and manic patients with nutritional supplements rather than medications, which bring along with them a host of side effects. To regulate her health over the years, Jenny has employed the wisdom of three homeopaths, an osteopath, and an herbalist. “The mixing of healing modalities is what made my healing complete. Everybody made a contribution.” She uses Sunrider Chinese herbs, Nature’s Sunshine herbs, and Young Living essential oils.

Jenny views her bout with psychosis as a gift from God. She relates that, in the traditional practice of some Native American cultures, if someone had a break with reality, the village would surround that person to prevent injury, while allowing the psychosis to run its course. Then, that person would be apprenticed to the group’s shaman. Surviving psychosis gave Jenny permission to do with her family as she knew best, including unassisted homebirth and attachment parenting. She feels that God was telling her, “You’re an adult now,” giving her courage to face family and friends who might doubt her choices. Jenny asserts, “I am very good at saying ‘no,’ and have not felt too much shame or guilt for spending money on myself and taking good care of my physical, emotional, and spiritual self.”

Jenny creates a protective space in which she can nurture her body and her family in the postpartum period. She says, “I truly believe quiet living is the key to mental wellness.”

NOTES
1. A book-length version of Jenny Hatch’s story, A Mother’s Journey: My Story of Healing after Postpartum Psychosis, can be downloaded at http://www.naturalfamilyco.com.
2. This sidebar is based on personal communications with Jenny Hatch via telephone (11 May 2006) and e-mail (17 May 2006).
3. Jenny Hatch’s story is also discussed in Kathleen Kendall-Tackett, Depression in New Mothers: Causes, Consequences and Treatment Alternatives (New York: Haworth Press, 2005), 199?214.
—S. R. F.
Sarah Fields sings, writes, and mothers in Hobart, Indiana, where she lives with her husband, Carl, and their children, Anna (4) and John (2).
I really enjoyed working with Sarah on this article and was so grateful to Mothering for taking on the topic. With so many women using antidepressants, the psychosis rates have gone up markedly. When I went psychotic nineteen years ago, it was one out of a thousand women who had a post partum psychosis. And the recurrence rate for those of us who had a mental break was one out of six. Recently I read that the recurrence rate is hitting one out of two. Which means fifty percent of those of us who have had post partum psychosis are having psychotic episodes after subsequent births. I believe the psychiatric meds are causing this alarming increase in psychosis.
Here is a link to an article I wrote for Compleat Mother online four years ago, it makes the case that psychiatric meds are a huge souce or repeat and increased emotional distress.
And the amazing Ann Blake Tracy had this to say about the recent push to SCREEN all mothers:
STOP THE MOTHERS ACT!!
EXTREMELY URGENT NEWS ON MOTHERS ACT!!!! CLICK HERE TO GET THE PRESS RELEASE AND SEND IT TO EVERYONE YOU CAN, ESPECIALLY FAXES TO THE SENATORS (FOR COMPLETE phone / fax CONTACT INFO. FOR SENATORS ON THE COMMITTEE CLICK HERE. A text version is available here.)
Sign the petition here: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-the-dangerous-and-invasive-mothers-act
Click here to get a flyer ready to print… (save it, then open it to print correctly) Click here to view the flyer… To get a copy emailed to you for 8.5 x 11 printing, email amy@uniteforlife.org
UPDATE: The HELP Committee meeting on this was postponed. The Senate is in a week-long recess. We want at least a million signatures on our petition so please share it with others.
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Past efforts:
This is the URL to a congressional soapbox alert set up by pro-drugging mental health groups. You can use the form but please make sure you alter the letter before hitting submit!!! (To read Dr. Tracy’s letter click here)
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/webreturn/?url=/ndmda/issues/alert/?alertid=10862256
Please alter the information in the pre-written letter to indicate your disapproval of the proposed law!!!
I am asking all of my friends to go to the website and write against this act. Melanie Blocker Stokes was a pharmaceutical rep who killed herself by jumping off a balcony when she was a new mom. She had been given many medications as well as ECT.
Antidepressants are ineffective and dangerous. See the numerous links and articles on our website and http://www.ssristories. com – there are links to many many relevant websites here and on SSRI Stories if you feel you need more information.
It’s bad enough that all new mothers are already inherently not trusted with their own babies. We don’t need to add to the paranoia, and the postpartum stage is a time for support and bonding, not inspection and scrutiny and drugging.
CCHR has had this action alert against the MOTHERS Act on their site for a while but since this is coming up for a vote in the Senate it is time to act now.
There are actually two soapbox alerts from the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance on the Congress.org website.
If you have time you can also create your own soapbox alert and it will appear in sopabox section of Congress.org’s website, and you can also check a box on your letter to make it appear in the Letters To Leaders section of the Congress.org website.
The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance created the soapbox alert form that is linked to at the top of the page. They are asking for support for the MOTHERS Act, which will be voted on within weeks. It has passed the house and is currently in the Senate in committees. Please use this form and then go on the Congress.org website and contact all of the other committee members if you have time. The information about the committees is on the soapbox alert written by the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance. They also created a “handy” support program for “bipolar” women who are pregnant or new parents. It’s quite disturbing to even think of all the things they are promoting. Your support of truth and safety is urgently needed.
This was written by Dr. Ann Blake Tracy.
My letter to Sen Charles Grassley:
I am writing as a constituent to ask you to NEVER support S.1375, the MOTHERS Act, when it is considered by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
This legislation is named for a young mother who, after suffering postpartum depression, tragically took her own life. She was given four combinations of anti-psychotic, anti-anxiety, and anti-depressant medications. She also underwent electroconvulsive therapy. Her family rallied around her with all their strength, but in the end, Melanie jumped to her death from the twelfth floor of a Chicago hotel. This is sheer torture and it is no wonder that this poor young mother was pushed over he edge by it all rather than being allowed to recover from her pregnancy and delivery.
Post partum psychosis happens in one out of 1000 new moms, but on antidepressant medications alone – without all the rest of the drugs she was given – that percentage of psychosis jumps by 10 times to one in 100 according to most package inserts for these drugs. This is akin to murder!
This legislation will ensure that new mothers and their families are also subjected to such treatment as they are screened for symptoms and provided so called “help” that pushes these new mothers over the edge.
Far too many Americans know little about mental illness in general, let alone about this tragic illness affecting young mothers and their families. Mental illness affects millions of Americans, but just how much of it is medication-induced? Bipolar Disorder has increased by 4000% in a recent 10 year period since the introduction of the newer antidepressans that are notorious for causing this disorder. The cost is beyond description! To get an idea in real life costs go to the database at www.ssristories.com posted by an Iowa native. You can also read last weeks paper on the mother in Ankeny who attempted to kill her son and then killed herself in withdrawal from her antidepressant – a very dangerous period as the FDA warned in 2005.
The MOTHERS Act is not needed and will only add to the nation’s most serious medical and social problems.
I look forward to your firm stand against this legislation when the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee votes on it.
Thank you for your consideration.
======
Here is the letter sent by Amy Philo (if you also saved a copy of your letter, feel free to send it to us and we will post it here).
I am writing as a constituent to ask you to vote AGAINST S.1375, the MOTHERS Act, when it is considered by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
When I was a first time new mother, the interference of doctors and nurses led to my being prescribed Zoloft. I had a severe adverse reaction and became homicidal and suicidal. You can see my story at
http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa060802_kd_chaada.2698424.html
It is also completely written out in full detail at:
http://chaada.org/smf/index.php?topic=15.0
Also see the recent news about the fact that antidepressants do not work but drug companies have been suppressing the negative trial data:
http://www.uniteforlife.org/suppresseddata.htm
In my opinion this bill is being promoted solely for the profit of pharmaceutical companies. There is nothing more threatening to the fabric of our society and to the future well being of our children and their parents than the invasion of privacy on new moms, especially in a way that threatens the safety of babies and their mothers. If you really want to help moms, we can support them with requirements for longer maternity leave and support for postpartum networks that enable her to find help with household duties and meals, breastfeeding and parenting.
I had a second baby 16 months ago at home with a midwife’s support. I had time to bond with him without interference. I had NO drugs in my body and I had NO postpartum depression. The rise in senseless violence is due to the rise in interference with drugs and the lack of social support.
If women can be given social support they will not be subject to confusing advice that causes them to doubt themselves and wind up on mind-altering drugs that cause them to murder and commit suicide.
If this bill is passed, any money spent on screening will be a complete waste of tax dollars. The results will be an INCREASE in the severity and frequency of postpartum depression and an increase in violence and suicide.
Mass mental health screening programs already in place like Teen Screen have shown to be ineffective and dangerous with an 84% plus misdiagnosis rate and the majority of students referred have been put on damaging and dangerous mind-altering drugs. See http://www.ssristories.com as well, for details on the recent school shootings which have involved psyciatric drugs.
I would like to see a full federal investigation of the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry with an emphasis on examining the effects of antidepressants. These drugs should be banned, and anyone who attempts to push them on a mom should be penalized.
Thank you for your consideration.
Jenny Hatch