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Prevention Task Force Recommends Depression Screenings For Pregnant Women, New Moms [KHN.org]

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One in seven women experience depression during pregnancy or the first year after giving birth, yet many may not realize it or report their concerns to clinicians. A new proposal by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force could help change that. It recommends that all women who are pregnant or within a year of giving birth be screened for perinatal depression, as it’s called. The screening proposal is included as part of a broader recommendation to screen all adults for depression that the task force released this week for public comment. The task force proposal would update the current guidelines, adopted in 2009, which recommend depression screening in all adults if clinicians are available to address depression care. In the 2009 document, the task force didn’t review depression in pregnant and postpartum women and made no screening recommendation for them.

 

[For more of this story, written by Michelle Andrews, go to http://khn.org/news/prevention...nant-women-new-moms/]

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Post Pardum Screening is essential. 

 

What we have not figured out is what should the treatment be?

 

Nor how should we screen appropriately?

 

If we just use the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) http://www.fresno.ucsf.edu/ped...s/edinburghscale.pdf 

 

we will (just like the Vanderbilt scales for ADHD) miss mother's who's depression may be due to intimate partner violence, childhood trauma, or a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest among many other possibilities.  

 

This is my concern because a positive screen in many regions of the country does not lead to a greater exploration of why depression is present, but instead to the quick fix --- you guessed it --- psychotropic drugs.  

 

These may be helpful but more and more studies are showing that they aren't. And certainly putting an expensive pill in your mouth everyday won't mitigate the effects of being physically assaulted or having an infant to care for conceived out of rape or incest. 

 

These are serious questions and the answers must be serious also.

 

I have seen this happen in medicine, frequently.

 

Thanks Tina

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