Perinatal Depression Research Paper

Depression is not what people think, it is not someone who is always sad, depression is a disorder of the continual sadness and loss of interest. Depression is more commonly known to be an emotional or mental condition of health. However, depression does have an effect to the body. The mental, or emotional, symptoms of depression can cause a difference in the way you think and work. However, the physical effects of the symptoms can be the differences in the eating habits and sleeping routine. There are 4, but technically 5, different versions of depression. Those 4 versions are persistent depressive disorder, perinatal depression, psychotic depression and seasonal affective depression. The one version that may or may not count is the bipolar

disorder, which would not be considered directly as depression.
Persistent depressive disorder, also known as dysthymia, is a chronic type of depression. Dysthymia is when a person’s mood is regularly low. A person with this disorder can have many episodes of major depression. People with persistent depressive disorder have many health problems, these problems are physical, emotional, social and cognitive. The physical problems that happen to people with dysthymia are fatigue, sleeping issues and eating problems, which all lead up to the overall health of the person’s body creating difficulties in everyday activities. Emotional issues with people with this disorder is depressed moods and anger. The cognitive complications with people for this disorder is inattentiveness, which is when someone has trouble, or lacks, focus on things or tasks, or can easily be distracted from what is in front of them. Last, but not least, the social difficulties include, low self-esteem or confidence, and a decrease with usual activities. People don’t just get diagnosed with persistent depressive disorder, some people are inherited with this disorder, meaning it came from their parents. Some people get diagnosed with this disorder from traumatic events in their life. Others get persistent depressive disorder from biological differences, which is when their brain literally has physical changes from previous symptoms. Lastly, people also get the disorder from the neurotransmitters that go with the brain chemicals and cause it to affect the brain when depressed. The treatments include medications and therapy, preferably psychotherapy.
Perinatal depression happens more with pregnant women or women who recently have children.

Perinatal depression occurs when women are either still in the pregnancy stages or after their birth. This can also be known as postpartum depression, however, the symptoms are far worse. New mothers or mothers-to-be who go through perinatal depression have a feeling that is extremely sad, exhausted and have extreme anxiety. Physical symptoms of perinatal depression and postpartum depression are the inability to sleep, fatigueness and the loss of appetite, or eating more than they originally did before. The causes of perinatal depression vary from physical changes from the pregnancy or after the pregnancy to the emotional issues like the lack of sleep during or after the pregnancy. Treatments suggested from the doctors are to either get psychotherapy or start taking antidepressants, prescribed by a

doctor.
When a person has a severe depressive illness that can include forms of psychosis, that person is diagnosed with a depression called psychotic depression. People with psychotic depression tend to have hallucinations and delusions. In other words, a person with psychotic depression usually breaks from reality. The mental symptoms are anxiety, agitation, hypochondria, lack of sleep, intellectual disability, delusions and hallucinations. The physical symptoms are physical immobility and constipation. There is not a full cause for psychotic depression; however, it was researched that people could have inherited the disorder from relatives. Also, the treatments of psychotic depression is antidepressants or antipsychotic medicines and the people diagnosed with this disorder should quickly be getting medical care and treatment.
Seasonal affective depression is a depression that can change over the seasons of the year.

It is more common for a person to get seasonal affective depression during the autumn or winter than get it during the spring or summer. It was researched that it’s the light, or phototherapy, and psychotherapy help with seasonal affective depression, which is probably why it’s less common to be diagnosed with seasonal affective depression in the summer or spring. Overall symptoms of seasonal affective depression include insomnia, change in weight, change in food habits, fatigueness, low confidence, low self-esteem, depressed nearly all day (almost every day), agitation, lack of focus and suicidal thoughts. There are symptoms more common in certain seasons, for example, in the fall and winter, people with seasonal affective depression tend to oversleep, tiredness, irritability, uncooperative with other people, oversensitive with rejection, weight gain and more craving of unhealthy foods. In the spring and summer, people diagnosed with seasonal affective depression usually are depressed, loss of appetite, insomnia, weight loss, agitation and anxiety. The causes of the seasonal affective depression include biological clock, meaning the amount of sunlight your body takes in, if it decreases your body tends to get the symptoms of the seasonal affective depression. Another cause would be, serotonin levels, which is also affected by the amount of sunlight you get. Lastly, a cause of

seasonal affective depression is melatonin levels, which can be affected by the changing of seasons and affect the sleeping pattern the body is used to. Treatments involve phototherapy, meaning getting sunlight, psychotherapy, and antidepressant medication.
There is still the overall depression, also known as major depressive disorder. Major depressive disorder is a mood disorder when you are continuously sad and loss of interest. Major depressive disorder is also known as depression, or clinical depression. Depression affects the way you feel, think and behave, which leads to many emotional and physical problems. A few examples of emotional problems include the feeling of hopelessness, sadness, or emptiness, as well as, anger bursts, frustration, losing interest in your usual daily routine, tiredness, restlessness and suicidal thoughts. Some physical problems are lack of sleep, loss of appetite, change of eating habits, weight loss or weight gain, headaches, body aches, and back pains. Some causes of depression would include hormones, inherited traits from family, brain chemistry, and biological differences. There are treatments for depression like psychotherapy or medications.
Believe it or not, but there is a lot of statistics in the medical fields about depression. From 2009 to 2012, about 7.6% of people, who are 12 years or older of age, have depression for a 2-week period. In between the years 2009 and 2010, the number of hospital visits and getting diagnosed with major depressive disorder is an average of 8 million visits. While in hospital care in 2010, the number of discharges after being diagnosed with clinical depression is 365,000. People with depression who go to treatment centers or have hospital care are suggested to stay in care for almost a week. It is recommended to stay in a medical care for about 6 and a half days until being discharged. Most shocking news, in the year of 2013, the number of suicides in each 100,000 population area is 13 suicides. However, the overall number of suicides in 2013 was 41,149 deaths. Suicide is known to be the 10th leading deaths in the United States. In America, alone, the average amount of suicide deaths each year is over 42,000 deaths. The suicide rates have increased in the last decade in America.
There is a type of treatment for all these types of depression. That treatment would be medical care at a hospital or a residential treatment center. However, this treatment is only recommended when the patient is really untrustworthy to keep themselves safe and secure. This treatment is extremely useful when a young child, teenager or adult goes into more critical thinking of themselves and result in trying to commit suicide. These treatment centers really help the people going through depression because it puts them in an area with peers that did similar things and could help each other out by doing a peer type of psychotherapy. Also, there is always the depression or suicide hotlines in countries that are available to everybody, every hour and every day.