14 DAY TRIAL // Over the years, studies have shown that between 14 and 23 percent of pregnant women suffer from one form of depression, in various degrees. Since 1999, the number of women treating their depression symptoms with anti-depressants nearly doubled, and reached about 13 percent in 2003. In a new paper, published in the September-October issue of the scientific journal General Hospital Psychiatry, experts investigate the correlations and possible management options of depression during pregnancy.
The new investigation was authored by experts at the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), AlphaGalileo reports. The proposals from the team, which also worked with a consulting developmental pediatrician, were submitted after the experts reviewed the world’s English-language literature on the issue. They reported results describing the association of depressive symptoms and anti-depressant treatment on fetal and neonatal outcomes.
According to the study results, both anti-depressants, and depression itself were found to have adverse consequences on the baby's fetal-growth changes, and also on the gestation period. Mothers who experienced symptoms of the condition and medicated themselves for it had a noticeably shorter gestation period than perfectly healthy, would-be mothers. The newborns also exhibited signs of neurobehavioral changes on account of their mothers' conditions, and were also determined to suffer from short-term neonatal irritability.
The team also revealed that some of the studies they looked at discovered associations between slight fetal malformations and anti-depressant use that started in the first trimester of pregnancy. However, the experts say, no direct correlation between a certain class of drugs, or an individual medicine, was found. “This timely article by Yonkers and colleagues reviews the data on the potential effects of both anti-depressant medications and depressive symptoms on birth and fetal outcomes,” the Editor-in-Chief of General Hospital Psychiatry, Wayne J. Katon, MD, says of the investigation.