Beating Postpartum And Perinatal Sadness

Everyone has feelings of sadness. In most cases, these occasions last  for only hours or days. Nearly one-fifth of the people in the world, however, are diagnosed with clinical depression, which causes depression that lasts for weeks, months, or longer. These emotions result in impaired functioning in career, family, or interpersonal relationships, which can become severe.

Females who experience signs of depression after becoming pregnant may be diagnosed with perinatal depression. This problem may develop at any point after a woman becomes pregnant, or any time thereafter, until the baby is one year old. Usually, however, women who develop this problem after childbirth are diagnosed with postpartum depression.

Perinatal depression or postpartum depression results from many causes. These causes can be physiological. For instance, mothers with a personal or family history of severe depression or mental illness are more likely to experience perinatal depression or postpartum depression. Moreover, alterations in hormone levels after childbirth, like drops in estrogen and progesterone amounts, can cause this condition. After childbirth, thyroid disorders may lead to symptoms of depression such as tiredness, irritability, and despair.

Often, mental depression results from emotional factors. Mothers may feel tired and overwhelmed in learning to manage the needs of the new baby. Such issues are often made worse by a lack of assistance from family, friends, or significant other. Financial issues may also assist in causing postpartum depression.

Perinatal depression and postpartum depression often have grave results for both the mother and her new child. Worry and depression may hinder a mother from bonding completely with her infant or being capable of meeting her child's physiological and emotional needs. This may worsen the mother's sense of insignificance, guilt, and low self-worth.

The child is also affected by the new mother's problems. An inability to bond with his or her mother may cause the baby to experience trust issues in emotional relationships throughout life. In addition, children who do not get their physiological or emotional needs met may fail to grow and develop properly. This condition, called "failure to thrive," may be quite harmful or even fatal to the child.

Perinatal depression or postpartum depression can affect everyone in the family. The spouse or significant other sometimes feels neglected or unable to relieve these depression symptoms.  This can severely wound the partnership. Other children in the family may have similar feelings, and have academic or peer  problems as well.

Depression damages the entire family. For this reason, women who develop perinatal depression or postpartum depression need to get depression treatment as quickly as possible. Several treatments are available, like counseling and medication treatments. Medicines, however, are often risky for nursing babies, and sometimes have erratic results due to the wide hormonal variations a woman experiences during these tumultuous months. Furthermore, typical counseling treatments can be lengthy and expensive.

Two therapies for dealing with depression that do not require medications and can rapidly show dramatically beneficial results are hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Traditional Hypnotherapy is most effective for persons who are easily hypnotized or can accept suggestions without needing to critique or understand them. Ericksonian Hypnotherapy is quite useful for those who often overanalyze. These therapies encourage people to relax and get rid of stress.

For people who tend to be more critical or analytical thinkers, NLP is typically more beneficial. With this technique, trained practitioners give individuals depression help by assisting them to restructure their mental processes. This strategy can, quite literally, allow a client think through the depressive state and overcome it.

Clients can overcome depression by mastering NLP tools like anchoring. They are coached to remember times when they were happy and controlled their situations. Remembering the memory renews these feelings. Individuals are taught to put two fingers together and remember these emotions. The unconscious mind associates the touch of the two fingers with the feelings. Thus, the finger touch becomes an "anchor."

Then, when the individual starts to feel overwhelmed, he or she sparks the anchor by touching these same two fingers together again. This elicits feelings of self-control and results in empowerment.

By using another technique called the Flash, people learn to reason away negative emotions. They instruct their unconscious minds to instantly exchange positive thoughts for negative ones. When negative thoughts arise, the brain instantly exchanges them for positive responses. After learning this technique, people find it almost impossible to think negative thoughts!

Summary: Perinatal depression and postpartum depression can have disastrous effects for a mother and her new infant. The rest of the family is also profoundly affected by these conditions. Because of the probable significance of the results of this disorder, females with depression need to get treatment as soon as symptoms begin. Two quite beneficial treatments that do not require medication or great outlays of time and financial resources are hypnosis and NLP.