Postpartum psychosis: “I’m afraid of how you’ll judge me, as a mother and as a person”

I have a story to tell you, but I’m afraid I’m a less than perfect narrator because there are crevasses in my mind that I fall through whenever I try to tell it. Let’s begin with a memory that is on solid ground: I can pin my finger firmly on the moment I began to wonder if something was really quite wrong. From behind me I heard a child’s voice, small but determined, counting, “One, two, three… one, two, three…” in a Glaswegian accent. I contorted this way and that in search of its pestering, persistent owner, but I was alone. This was new. Later that evening I watched a psychedelic display of electric lions, roaring tigers and the cast of the film Jumanji cavort on the bare blue wall. I wasn’t afraid, just captivated. Yet a voice, this time my own, questioned how I could be seeing such a spectacle and suggested, gently, that perhaps those around me were right – things were very wrong.

Given that all of this was happening in my room on a psychiatric ward, I was a little late to the realisation party. There had been other not-so-subtle hints – in my belief that my baby had been swapped at birth, for instance, and that road signs were tailored messages for me. I held these truths to be self-evident and never considered them to be odd, let alone symptoms of an illness. Yet that’s precisely what they were – evidence of a sick and struggling brain. Just as a diseased heart struggles to keep time, or a broken leg struggles to bear weight, my poorly brain was struggling to maintain my personality and kept coughing up delusions and hallucinations.

I was diagnosed with postpartum psychosis, a severe mental illness that affects about one or two in every 1,000 women soon after childbirth. It can cause a litany of symptoms, from anxiety and profound sadness to chattiness, hyperactivity and euphoria. Women with postpartum psychosis can rapidly cycle between moods and may experience hallucinations and delusions. While it’s more common in women who have bipolar disorder, it can affect women who’ve never had any mental health issues before. It’s a psychiatric emergency that requires urgent treatment because the symptoms can start suddenly and get worse quickly. At its most severe it poses a risk of suicide. It can even lead to accidental harm to the baby or infanticide, though this is exceedingly rare.

Unfortunately, infanticide grabs headlines and so women who suffer postpartum psychosis often worry about the stigma of revealing they’ve had the disease, a stigma that also affects mothers with other maternal mental health problems, such as postpartum depression. Many don’t seek help. One Australian study found that of those women who had symptoms of postpartum depression, 41 per cent had not sought help by nine months after the birth. As well as stigma and embarrassment, many said they believed their symptoms were normal and would go away on their own.

Reference:

• Action on Postpartum Psychosis – research, information and peer support.
• Mind – advice and support for people in the UK experiencing mental illness.
• Samaritans – advice and support for people in the UK experiencing mental illness, including a 24-hour helpline on 116 123.