Individuo, Comunidad, Gobierno Y Responsabilidad Social Ii

Natural childbirth causes PTSD in some moms? A closer look
Posted on August 14, 2012 |

Like postpartum depression, PTSD from childbirth is often not treated.
As you may know, I taught natural childbirth classes for many years, and had both of my children naturally, without any pain medication. So when I found this article in Skygrid that mentioned natural childbirth causing PTSD in somewomen, I was very curious.
Can childbirth cause PTSD? YES, but why?
I have no doubt that, in some cases, giving birth can be a traumatic experience that can lead to PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). I have been at a couple of births as a doula that I would definitely call traumatic for the mom, and possibly for other family in the room, too. What was intriguing to me about this article,however, was the claim that a much higher percentage of women who had natural births went on to show signs of PTSD than those who had epidurals.
Now, you might be thinking, “of COURSE natural births are going to cause more PTSD, don’t they hurt more?” But you have to remember my background. As a natural childbirth educator and doula, I know a LOT of women who have given birth without medication. Veryfew, if any, of them described their birth as anything approaching traumatic, so I do not imagine natural births causing PTSD more often than medicated ones. I have, however, spoken with many women who were looking for classes for their second or subsequent baby and had experienced a traumatic natural birth previously. In general, they either had a normal (unmedicated) birth by accident – there wasjust no time for the anesthesiologist to arrive and place the epidural – or they were not trained to cope well with labor contractions, did not have enough support, or were confined to bed and unable to labor as they needed to. Many of these women came to my classes and had an untraumatic, even empowering, natural birth the second time, after having prepared.
So, in trying to figure out why thisstudy found that more women having unmedicated births were developing PTSD symptoms, I traced the news story back to the press release about 1/3 of postpartum women developing PTSD symptoms, and the original study on Postpartum Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms.
The study was completed with 89 women who had given birth in Israel. Of these, 3 were determined to have developed full PTSD, 7partial PTSD, and an additional 15 had some PTSD symptoms, but could not be considered a true diagnosis. The study does not make it clear how many mothers gave birth without pain medication. They do state that “A significantly smaller number of women who developed PTSD symptoms received analgesia during delivery
compared to the control group,” but that precise percentage is not revealed. Theauthors have a chart that splits all of the study participants into categories: “Natural,” “Elective Cesarean,” “Emergency Cesarean, and “Instrumental.” since this chart does not include a category for “vaginal with anagesia” or “epidural,” we can not assume that all of the women either had a cesarean, an instrumental delivery, or had no medication at all. It seems that the study authors use “natural”to mean “vaginal, without vacuum or forceps, ” not a normal vaginal birth without pain medication. Ah, now I think I understand.
If you combine the information in this study with what we already know about PTSD, and about PTSD and childbirth, from other studies, we can conclude that there are a number of risk factors. Here are the factors that were more often associated with the development ofPTSD after giving birth:
“Very uncomfortable” with being unclothed during labor (80% of those who developed PTSD, vs. 27.7% of non-PTSD group).
Previous birth was considered “traumatic” (60% of PTSD group, vs. 15.5% of control group.
History of depressive symptoms or seeking mental help. 50% of the PTSD group had sought out help from a mental health care practitioner after a previous...