Dr. Dunnewold shares the different types of PPD that affect women.
Dr. Dunnewold:
Yes, there are postpartum anxiety disorders where a woman is primarily worried and can even become obsessive. So we would have postpartum obsessive-compulsive disorder where she gets stuck on ideas of harm that could come to herself or her child. There are women who have panic attacks, so postpartum panic is an entity that we see.
There’s a more generic postpartum depression where a woman might have a mix of low mood and intense worry and concerns that she can’t be a good mother and that sort of thing that would be a more generic postpartum depression.
There’s the postpartum stress disorder which is where a woman is reacting to a concrete stress that may have happened, like a difficult birth or she may be relating back to an incident that happened when she was young, and going through the medical procedures to give birth may raise those feelings again.
And there’s postpartum psychosis or mania in which a woman is not thinking clearly. She really isn’t herself. She has ideas that most people would agree are somewhat strange or odd and just really doesn’t look at the world the way other people look at the world.
About Dr. Ann Dunnewold, M.A., Ph.D.:
Dr. Ann Dunnewold is a licensed psychologist practicing in Dallas, Texas. With 25 years experience helping women cope with life issues, Ann assist in addressing parental guilt and worry, creating a balance between family, self and work, postpartum depression, couples counseling and more. She received her M.A. and Ph.D in counseling Psychology from Ohio State University and is registered by the National Register of Health Service Providers in Psychology. Dr. Dunnewold uses an eclectic therapy approach to focus on the here and now and changes thinking to change behaviors.
Visit Dr. Dunnewold at her website