The HAS recommendations (which are a sort of official guide to medicine) for nervous breakdown have just been published, with a special chapter for pregnant or breastfeeding women and the elderly.
Depression in older people is a common illness that often results in suicide if left untreated, which is quite simple and very effective. This is why the HAS recommends that doctors, in particular general practitioners, be vigilant and detect the first signs of depression. She recommends that a “Support relationship is offered, if necessary, to their caregivers” and reminds that “The response to antidepressants is slower than in younger subjects”. And most importantly, that the side effects of drugs should be monitored. Because there are very different ways of expressing your depression when you no longer speak, or less … Like refusing to eat, which is also one of the ways, not always very conscious but frequent, of to commit suicide in very old age.
Watch out for the “Baby Blues”
Regarding pregnant women, for several years, taking antidepressants has been debated. According to some, they greatly increase the risk of premature birth, particularly in women who continued treatment after the 1er semester of pregnancy. For the moment, no study agrees on this dangerousness, but the HAS adopts the route of caution: if the therapeutic strategies are identical compared to the rest of the population, “Non-drug treatment should be preferred”. That is to say more frequent recourse to psychotherapy and no longer to drugs.
The doctors and all the team who take care of the childbirth must be, according to the High Authority, better informed (by whom, the document does not say it) as for a possible antidepressant treatment. She also insists on the first months following childbirth when the sinister “baby blues” takes its toll. Because few women escape the emotional and physical repercussions of childbirth. In the first days that follow, the feeling of helplessness, of the unknown, very often results in a mood disorder that goes beyond the tears that those around them find “normal” … The baby blues has roots deeper, due to the hormonal “tornado” that pregnancy, childbirth and the breastfeeding mechanism represent for women.
In order not to transform this sublime moment into a nightmare, it is up to those around you to be vigilant and the doctors to act. The mother is worried about her baby, doubts his ability to take care of him …. It’s the baby blues.
At 21e century, being a mother is not as easy as nature had expected.
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