W
hen most of us think about postnatal mental
health issues, we think of Postnatal Depression.
And when we think about that, we often think
of a woman who struggles to bond with her
baby and can’t get out of bed. While this does, of course,
happen, it is only one small part of a spectrum of mood
disorders that impact women during and after childbirth. The
focus of this article is going to be on the often-neglected area
of Postnatal Anxiety. The precursors and consequences of
maternal post-natal anxiety have received much less attention
than depression, despite being one of the most frequently
reported mental health difficulties experienced by parents
following childbirth.
Anxiety is characterised by symptoms including worry,
restlessness, agitation, sleep disturbance, and apprehension
(American Psychiatric Association, 1994). In the postnatal
period, the baby often becomes the focal point of this anxiety.
Did she eat enough? If I bring him outside, will he catch a
virus? Am I doing a good enough job? No one can care for
her as well as me so I cannot leave her with anyone. All new
mothers have these thoughts at various points but it can be
crippling when they become obsessive thoughts, or they
prevent us from having much needed sleep because the
thoughts keep going around and around in our heads. That
need for control and safety, hypervigilance, can spread to
Dr Suzanne Meenan
offers advice on how to recognise
and ease the symptoms of Postnatal Anxiety
other members of the family or to the environment. Intrusive
thoughts about the baby coming to harm plays like a record
player in the mind.
While the prevalence of maternal postnatal anxiety is high,
research into its potential effects on parenting behaviours
has been slow to emerge. Several studies have reported that
mothers who are anxious over a long period of time or go
untreated, may overstimulate their infants, display intrusive
or inconsistent behaviour towards their baby, and engage in
behaviour that is insensitive to infant’s cues. Lack of sensitivity
to such cues may contribute to and exacerbate sleep, settling
and feeding problems in infants. (Feldman et al. 2009).
Compared with mothers not experiencing clinically significant
levels of anxiety, mothers reporting high anxiety symptoms were
also more likely to report using ineffective parenting behaviours
(e.g. less warmth, affection and involvement, and more irritability
and frustration) within the parent-child relationship. Lower
parental self-efficacy can make it very hard to journey through
those first few challenging months when we all struggle to feel
normal and functioning. Throwing in, on top of that, that you
don’t feel you are doing a good job of it or are failing at the role
of motherhood will make it feel impossible. This, sadly, is where
a lot of women get stuck and that awful cycle of anxiety and
shame can often prevent people from being honest with their
support network or reaching out for help.
Anxious
Times
November 2016
63
