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The “baby blues” is the most minor form of postpartum depression. It usually starts 1 to 3 days after delivery, and is characterized by weeping, irritability, lack of sleep, mood changes and a feeling of vulnerability. These “blues” can last several weeks. It’s estimated that between 50% and 80% of mothers experience them.

Women with this condition suffer despondency, tearfulness, feelings of inadequacy, guilt, anxiety, irritability and fatigue.

A woman with postpartum depression may regard her child with ambivalence, negativity or disinterest.

An adverse effect on the bonding between mother and child may result.

The depression can begin at any time between delivery and 6 months post-birth, and may last up to several months or even a year

Postpartum psychosis is a relatively rare disorder. The symptoms include extreme confusion, fatigue, agitation, alterations in mood, feelings of hopelessness and shame, hallucinations and rapid speech or mania. Studies indicate that it affects only one in 1000 births.

The exact cause of postpartum depression is not known.

One factor may be the changes in hormone levels that occur during pregnancy and immediately after childbirth.

There is no one trigger; postpartum depression is believed to result from many complex factors. It is important, however, to communicate to women with postpartum depression that they did not bring it upon themselves.

One certain fact is that women who have experienced depression before becoming pregnant are at higher risk for postpartum depression.

The risk increases in women who have experienced 2 or more abortions, or women who have a history of obstetric complications.

a difficult relationship, lack of a support network, stressful events during the pregnancy or after delivery.

Therapy, support networks and medicines such as antidepressants are used to treat postpartum depression.

it can be difficult to distinguish between a foul mood and actual depression.

Physical examinations are always the first step in screening teens for depression so that other possible causes can be ruled out.

Simply prescribing teens an antidepressant is not good enough as a stand-alone treatment.

therapy

"These (simulations) are intended to expose the recruits to combat conditions to teach them that they can trust their training, that they can actually do their jobs, perform first aid, execute whatever orders they're supposed to be executing, under combat condition," he said. "It also introduces them to fear and stress under combat conditions."

who tosses volunteers out of airplanes with sensors all over their bodies to try and understand why combat veterans develop PTSD.

Parodi has found that some people possess an optimal fear response, which she calls the "warrior brain" — meaning they think clearly during a stressful period and once the stressful period ends, their fear response returns back to normal.

"As far as to the application to preventing PTSD, I think what the military ultimately wants to do is to be able to develop and incorporate into their training program, similar to what the SEALS are doing, where you can expose recruits to stressful situations," he said. "But you also want to arm them with the psychological tools — that they need to recognize, that they need to function at maximum capacity during the stressful situation. And when it ends, they need to put it behind them and move on."

But the current treatment has a success rate of just 40 percent.