Did you experience postpartum depression after your baby was born? Did you mother have the same experience? How about the other women in your family? A study indicates that postpartum depression could have a genetic link, as well as an environmental one.
Postpartum depression is a serious medical illness. It is something that can be experienced by both women and men (but we tend to hear more about it being diagnosed in women). Symptoms of postpartum depression can begin a few months after a baby has been born, and can also occur after a stillbirth or miscarriage. Parents who suffer from this illness can have problems with caring for, or bonding with, their newborn.
Symptoms of postpartum depression can include feeling sad, hopeless, or empty. A person might not feel hunger, and as a result will lose weight. Or, conversely, a person could feel hungrier than usual, and end up gaining weight. Other symptoms include problems sleeping, inability to concentrate, and a loss of pleasure in the everyday things that the person would normally feel happiness from.
A study was done that analyzed data from 1,200 mothers found that there was a strong interaction between the presence of certain genetic markers and postpartum depression. The genetic markers affect the amount of serotonin is released through the person’s nervous system. People who had this genetic marker reacted more strongly to their environment than people who did not have it.
When mothers who had the genetic marker were in an environment that was a positive one, they did extremely well. If those mothers were in a “less than positive” environment instead, then they were much more likely to experience postpartum depression in the year after their baby was born. Mothers who did not have the reactive gene seemed to do alright no matter what their environment happened to be like.
Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, the lead member of this study, refers to this difference in susceptibility as the “orchid and dandelion”. A person who has this genetic marker is an “orchid”. They do fantastic in a good environment, but not very well at all in a bad one. Those without the marker are “dandelions”. They are going to do just as well no matter what environment they find themselves in.
There are also environmental links to postpartum depression. Mothers with low levels of education were more likely to experience postpartum depression than mothers who were highly educated. Often, education links to socioeconomic status. The women in the study who had low socioeconomic status were twice as likely to have postpartum depression than women who were in families that had more income. In each situation, the mothers who had the gene were more reactive to their environment than those who did not have it.
Image by Michael Arrighi on Flickr