Many people see postpartum depression as a problem that affects just the new mother. Unfortunately, this is not true. The whole family faces relationship changes that alter family interactions drastically. Depressed moms who do not seek help often put their babies in danger of experiencing serious or deadly setbacks in growth and development.
The medical term for this complex condition is nonorganic failure to thrive. Nonorganic indicates that there is no medical cause for the infant’s delays. As a result of the mother’s postpartum depression, she often fails to care for the baby’s nutritional and emotional needs. Although the infant may cry in hunger at the beginning, he or she usually gives up and quits interacting with other people. This disorder may cause malnutrition, starvation, or even death.
Doctors use growth charts to follow a child’s physical growth in height, weight, and head size. If a baby is healthy from birth, his or her size will be within the normal range on these charts. If the infant begins to have serious growth delays, the problem will appear when tracking his or her development against normal ranges. Once an infant’s progress is lower than the fifth percentile, doctors get seriously concerned.
Other symptoms may become evident before an infant’s growth delays reach this crisis stage. Most babies who develop normally are interested in their surroundings. In contrast, babies who do not thrive show little or no curiosity about their environment. These infants do not usually make sounds or talk; they have stopped trying to respond to their caretakers.
How much of a problem is this condition? If not treated properly, a child may starve to death. Even if the baby grows enough to remain alive, his or her muscles, bone, and brain cannot develop enough. Additionally, even if they are treated, these children do not “catch up” completely. They often develop relationship problems or eating conditions, even when they finally start getting their needs met.
Infants diagnosed with failure to thrive often become critically ill from malnutrition. They usually are hospitalized for several weeks at a time. In some cases, they get so weak that feeding from a bottle is exhausting. They receive nutrition via a tube inserted in their stomachs, or even in a vein to receive food!
The saddest aspect of this condition is that it is so preventable. If moms with postpartum depression recognize this problem at its onset, they can get treatment and do not have to subject their helpless infants to these horrific complications. In fact, studies have demonstrated that nine-tenths of those mothers who suffer from depression who seek help will experience significant improvement!
Numerous approaches are useful in treating postpartum depression. Some doctors use medicines, such as antidepressants. These drugs are expensive. Nursing mothers should also avoid them. Furthermore, these drugs can cause thoughts of suicide; these medicines must be prescribed with extreme caution.
Usually, doctors recommend counseling rather than or along with medicines. Psychotherapy, however, can be expensive. In addition, it often requires a lot of extra time, and several weeks may go by before this treatment is successful. Unfortunately, depending on the severity of the woman’s depression, this may be too long for her baby. If the child begins to experience growth delays, additional treatment may be needed.
Luckily, other non-medicinal treatment options are available. Two innovative, beneficial approaches that typically yield results much more quickly than counseling, and are much less dangerous than medication, are Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP and hypnosis for depression. These two approaches usually begin to work after even a single treatment. Moreover, they cost much less than alternative approaches.
Mothers who think they might have postpartum depression need to seek help at once so that their babies are not at risk for critical growth problems. The severity of the effects on the infant demands that the treatment work quickly, and have a high rate of effectiveness. NLP and hypnotherapy for depression are inexpensive, work quickly, and are extremely effective. This makes these two treatments ideal for helping women with postpartum depression.
Summary: Postpartum depression is depression that begins after the birth of a child. These new mothers cannot provide their infants the caring they need to survive and grow. This causes failure to thrive, a serious, potentially deadly disorder, which hurts the infant. Mothers who suspect that they might have postpartum depression need to get help as soon as possible. Hypnosis and NLP for depression are inexpensive and have demonstrated amazing effectiveness.
Alan B. Densky, CH specializes in stress and depression related symptoms as a certified hypnotist and NLP Practitioner. During his 32-year career he has helped thousands of clients. He offers MP3s for hypnosis depression therapy. Visit his NLP/hypnosis site for the hypnosis article index, or watch his free videos on hypnosis.
- Alan Densky