I was interviewed for this article which was just published on Health.com. It shares the experiences of several women who are/were pregnant and taking or not taking bipolar medications.
Do Pregnancy and Bipolar Disorder Mix?
As recently as 10 years ago, doctors advised women with bipolar disorder not to have children. While that thinking is now dated, bipolar women often face tough decisions about how to handle their medication during pregnancy.
Most drugs prescribed for bipolar disorder carry some risk of birth defects, yet women who discontinue medication risk relapsing into a manic or depressive episode; during the postpartum phase the relapse rate is as high as 50% to 70%, by some estimates. Even more alarming, bipolar women are 100 times more likely than other women to experience postpartum psychosis, a severe mood disorder that, at its very worst, can result in infanticide.
Read the full article here
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3 comments:
That was an AMAZING article!! I learned so much about my unknown condition. Still not sure if I am struggling with PPD or true Bipolar or both (maybe I'm in denial b/c I was diagnosed w/ BD, but have been off meds for 5 years-not necessarily stable though!)
But this article helped me make sense of a lot of what's going on with me right now...how when you are bipolar, there's a MUCH HIGHER RISK of getting postpartum depression (I'm 5 months postpartum). And how sleep deprivation from nursing plays into it all. So fascinating to read. Thank you so much for sharing this!
Do you people have a facebook fan page? I looked for one on twitter but could not discover one, I would really like to become a fan!
This is very great thing you have shared with us. Now I found enough resources by your tips about this issue, Thank you.
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