OCD among new mothers more prevalent than previously thought
2021-03-23
(Press-News.org) Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) among those who have recently given birth is more common than previously thought, and much of this can be attributed to thoughts of harm related to the baby, new UBC research has found.
The researchers also learned that OCD can go undetected when new parents aren't asked specifically about infant-related harm.
OCD is an anxiety-related condition characterized by the recurrence of unwanted, intrusive and distressing thoughts. If left untreated, it can interfere with parenting, relationships and daily living.
The study estimates that eight per cent of postpartum women report symptoms that meet criteria for a diagnosis of OCD at some point during pregnancy, and 17 per cent do so in the 38 weeks after delivery. Prior research had estimated the prevalence of OCD at about 2.2 per cent over the pregnancy and postpartum period.
"What really matters now is that we screen for and assess OCD among perinatal women with perinatal-specific questions and assessment methods. It is especially important that we include questions about intrusive thoughts of infant-related harm. This ensures that perinatal women suffering from OCD are not missed and can be directed toward appropriate treatment," said Dr. Nichole Fairbrother, a clinical associate professor in the UBC department of psychiatry who was lead author of the study. "Perinatal OCD is common and we have a responsibility to identify those who experience it and ensure they receive timely, evidence-based treatment."
The study is one of the first to use newly updated criteria for diagnosing OCD which somewhat lowers the threshold for a diagnosis.
However, the researchers also believe they uncovered more OCD by asking the right questions. New mothers appear not to recognize their infant-related thoughts in the standard questions asked during OCD assessments. By including specific questions about harm to the baby, the researchers were better able to uncover symptoms.
"The traditional questions are framed in a way that doesn't really help women connect to the intrusive thoughts they've had about their baby." said Fairbrother. "If they don't recognize their experience in the questions that are asked, they may be underreporting."
Fairbrother and her team from UBC, the University of Victoria, the Women's Health Research Institute and King's College London surveyed 580 women in British Columbia during their third trimester of pregnancy and for six months afterward. Participants completed online questionnaires and interviews designed to assess the presence and severity of OCD symptoms.
The prevalence of OCD among new mothers peaked approximately eight weeks after delivery at nearly nine per cent. The study data suggests that it resolves naturally among some women as they become used to parenting, but for others it persists and may require treatment.
It's important for care providers to know when women are most at risk, because they may be reluctant to report their symptoms.
"When mothers have these kinds of thoughts they might think, 'There's something wrong with me and I can't tell anyone because there could be terrible consequences for me and my baby,' Fairbrother said.
Education for both women and their care providers is needed, she said. If care providers are able to distinguish between thoughts that are perfectly normal, those that might indicate a need for treatment, and those that might signal a threat to the baby, they are less likely to err on the side of caution in a way that would have consequences for women and their babies.
INFORMATION:
The study was published today in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-03-23
ANN ARBOR, Mich., (March 23, 2021) Researchers are urging consumers to avoid using weight loss or sports supplements that list deterenol as an ingredient. Scientists at NSF International (NSF), Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance recently tested 17 brands of supplements listing deterenol as an ingredient and found nine potentially harmful, experimental stimulants in the products.
Researchers at the Netherlands' National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) and Belgium's Sciensano also participated in the study.
Supplements containing deterenol have not been approved for use in humans in the United States and have been linked to reports of adverse events, including nausea, vomiting, sweating, agitation, ...
2021-03-23
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) President and CEO Bruce Stillman has been dissecting DNA replication, a critical step in cell division, since the 1980s. His lab studies how Origin Recognition Complexes--ORCs--coordinate DNA duplication. They discovered how our cells assemble and disassemble ORCs during the cell division cycle. One ORC protein is sequestered into small liquid droplets, keeping it apart until the right time to recruit other proteins and initiate DNA replication.
The ORC recognizes where to initiate replication at numerous locations along the long, linear stretches of DNA ...
2021-03-23
Philadelphia, March 23, 2021 - During the COVID-19 pandemic, Joseph S. Alpert, MD, Editor-in-Chief of The American Journal of Medicine, published by Elsevier, has observed that although non-COVID inpatients suffered from the usual mix of conditions such as heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease exacerbations, the Internal Medicine inpatient population was distinctly different from what he had seen over the past decades. They were considerably sicker and closer to dying than in the past.
Dr. Alpert has been working on the Internal Medicine, Cardiac Care Unit, and Cardiology consult services. "At ...
2021-03-23
Have you ever wondered why you are able to hear a sentence and understand its meaning - given that the same words in a different order would have an entirely different meaning? New research involving neuroimaging and A.I., describes the complex network within the brain that comprehends the meaning of a spoken sentence.
"It has been unclear whether the integration of this meaning is represented in a particular site in the brain, such as the anterior temporal lobes, or reflects a more network level operation that engages multiple brain regions," ...
2021-03-23
Domestication has a consistent effect on the gut microbiota of animals and is similar to the effects of industrialisation in human populations, with ecological differences such as diet having a strong influence.
These findings, published today in eLife, highlight how the flexibility of the gut microbiota can help animals respond to ecological change and could help identify ways of manipulating gut microbial communities in the service of health.
Animals typically have complex communities of microbes living in their gut that can strongly influence functions such as immunity and metabolism. These communities ...
2021-03-23
A new study co-authored by a Tulane University geoscientist shows that human efforts to tame the Mississippi River may have had an unintended positive effect: more rapid transport of carbon to the ocean.
The paper, published in AGU Advances, describes the work of a team of researchers who set out to learn more about the fate of organic carbon that is transported in large quantities by the Mississippi River. Organic carbon is mainly derived from plant remains, soils, and rocks, throughout the drainage basin of the Mississippi River that covers about 40% of the United States.
"We estimate that over the past century, the amount of organic carbon lost to the atmosphere during Mississippi River transport to the Gulf of Mexico ...
2021-03-23
"Several countries, including the United Kingdom and Canada have stated that they will delay second doses of COVID-19 vaccines in response to supply shortages, but also in an attempt to rapidly increase the number of people immunized," explains Chadi Saad-Roy, a graduate student in the Departments of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) and Quantitative and Computational Biology in the Lewis-Sigler Institute at Princeton and the lead author of the study.
"The original clinical trials of the vaccines, plus subsequent epidemiology, are quite optimistic regarding the efficacy of the first dose. However, ...
2021-03-23
Featured on the cover of the Soil Science Society of America Journal, researchers at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the Spanish National Research Council partnered to create a new camera allowing for the imaging of wetland soil activity in real time. This camera gives the classic IRIS (indicator of reduction in soils) technology a big upgrade. IRIS is used universally by researchers and soil assessors to determine if soils are behaving like wetland soils and should therefore be classified as such. However, before this new camera, soil assessors couldn't quantify the rate of iron reduction in saturated wetland soils, and ...
2021-03-23
BOSTON - An analysis of sex differences in the genetics of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and major depressive disorders indicates that while there is substantial genetic overlap between males and females, there are noticeable sex-dependent differences in how genes related to the central nervous system, immune system, and blood vessels affect people with these disorders.
The findings, from a multinational consortium of psychiatric researchers including investigators and a senior author at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), could spur better treatments for major psychiatric disorders. They are published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.
The findings were made possible only through the cooperation of more than 100 investigators and research groups, ...
2021-03-23
A new technique that can trace which tissues and organs the DNA in our blood comes from has been reported today in the open-access eLife journal.
The method, called GETMap, could be used in prenatal screening, to monitor organ transplant rejection, or test for cancers that are concealed in the body.
"Analysis of circulating free DNA has been shown to be useful for screening for early asymptomatic cancers," explains first author Wanxia Gai, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China. "As cancer-associated DNA changes are present in ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] OCD among new mothers more prevalent than previously thought
