Postpartum depression affects nearly 1 out of every 5 new mothers.  The most common symptoms included anxiety, guilt, sadness, fear, irritability, and either an increase or decrease in appetite.  These symptoms most commonly appear in the first month or two following the child’s birth.

While many postpartum depression treatments involve medicine (usually pharmaceutical drugs of one kind or another) there are risks involved for nursing mothers in addition to the other risks of side effects posed by prescription drugs.

Several studies have confirmed the belief that there is a non-drug simple way to alleviate postpartum depression in just a few hours:  sleep deprivation.  That’s correct… getting less sleep  Could it really be that simple?

Yes, according to nearly forty years of research and studies involving more than 1,700 patients and resulting in 75 published papers* documenting the results.

While this sounds too good to be true it really works.  If a depressed mother stays up all night, or even the last half of the night, it is likely that by morning the depression will lift.  Its certainly worth trying especially for new mothers hesitant to turn to drugs for help.

If you do try this simple technique please understand that this is far from a ‘magic pill’ form of postpartum depression treatment. There are obviously drawbacks to getting less sleep including including drowsiness during the day, decreased cognitive functioning and memory.

There are other drug-free postpartum depression techniques that can also work wonders including:

1. support groups (in person or online)
2. family and friends
3. eating healthy foods
4. a good cognitive behavior therapy such as the highly rated Cure Postpartum Program

[*]J. Christian Gillin, Monte Buchsbaum, Joseph Wu, Camellia Clark, William Bunney Jr., Sleep deprivation as a model experimental antidepressant treatment: Findings from functional brain imaging, Depression and Anxiety 14 (1), 37-49, 2001

photo by: 3Neus

licensed under: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

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