One in six women suffer from postpartum depression

The postpartum period is among the most intense in a mother’s life. But it is also a moment of great vulnerability, which can be accompanied by real psychological suffering. For the first time in France, researchers studied mothers’ mental health two months after giving birth. Their works published in Weekly epidemiological bulletinIt shows that an average of 16.7% of them are affected by postpartum depression (PPD), that more than a quarter suffer from anxiety, and that one in twenty women may experience suicidal thoughts in the first months after giving birth.

The team, led by Nolwyn Regnault, head of the Perinatal, Early Childhood and Mental Health Unit at Public Health France, worked on data collected during the recent national study on the perinatal period (European Neighborhood Policy) in 2021. This large-scale study is carried out every five to six years on a representative sample of women who gave birth in France during the same…