When mothers are not happy ... A new balance post partum depression is a phenomenon that has come to light, with particular strength in recent years. The public has discovered that mothers with large disturbance may even kill their own children. This behavior is even more puzzling when you consider that it is the mothers have the responsibility to give birth to children, to protect them from external dangers and to raise them and then enter the adult world. Let then together to understand what are the psychological dynamics that lead a mother to enter into this vortex of negative thoughts and feelings in the relationship with your child.
As mentioned in previous post, the transition from pregnancy to being a mother is sensitive, is at this time that the mother must begin to distinguish between unconscious fantasies and reality, compared with an infant and the world around . In this early period is absolutely normal to experience some moments in the motions of anger or frustration with the child. If we think for example to a child who wakes up often at night, or refusing to eat, we can understand that this may make the new parents to the test and, since we are all human with our limitations, it is sometimes normal to feel negative emotions. In normal situations, these thoughts are easily suppressed by the mother, through the use of defense mechanisms evolved, such as self-mockery. Despite this, in the context of our society is unfortunately entrenched the stereotype that the only new mothers should rejoice in their motherhood, without expressing any kind of disturbance. For this reason, emotions and thoughts are entirely normal and "human" are not easily accepted by women and even more on the people who are close and tend to be negative, to give way to an image of serenity and total dedication that But is at the facts.
We said then that becoming parents involves a process of development and reorganization of the personality, the acquisition of the maternal role and operation of the system of care of the child. These mental processes are often developed during pregnancy and the first months of baby's life at an unconscious level by the woman. Where this process does not take place or are being implemented only partially, may be rooted psychopathological more or less severe. Usually there are three main types of conditions that new mothers can come up:
- the maternity blues or baby blues
- the post-partum depression
- the puerperal psychosis
The "maternity blues" is a slight transient noise that afflicts more than half of Western women in the days immediately following childbirth. E 'marked by crying spells, mood swings and hypersensitivity that is becoming more evident around the fifth day after birth and tend to last a few hours or days.
The clinical picture of post-partum depression
is instead characterized by feelings of inadequacy, of incompetence and hopelessness, anger, hypersensitivity, anxiety, shame, hatred and neglect towards themselves and towards the child, disturbed sleep and appetite, decreased sexual desire and suicidal thoughts.
Besides the obvious hormonal reasons, due to the sudden rearrangement of hormone levels after childbirth, according to the literature there are some factors predisposing to the development of postnatal depression, including having lost their mother before 11 years, the lack of an intimate marital relationship, lack of paid work and family in the presence of three or more children under 14 years.
The depression of the mother is obviously to influence the mother-child in this situation, in fact, the mother, despite being physically present with her baby, it's not on an emotional level, tends to be "unapproachable" interaction with him, "reflects" the behavior and the interplay of the infant tends to be sporadic, interrupted and characterized by low emotional tone.
In some types of personalities instead of the event of motherhood can bring the imbalances so as to generate a deep
puerperal psychosis. In this state, the new mothers shows a retreat in itself, is sad, completely rejects her child is apathetic, slovenly, neglected his personal hygiene, lack of appetite and insomnia shows. May report hallucinations, usually auditory, and delusions of paranoid type. This condition may have spontaneous remission and may last a few days, months or years. In the case of spontaneous remission plays a major role the ability of families to tolerate, absorb and reprocess the new mother's anxiety. Among the most alarming about this is there are suicide attempts or aggressive and destructive impulses toward the child. But we must emphasize that most of the time the woman, before arriving at the behavior of such severity, expressed their need for help. If this expression is not heard of suffering for the lack of a sufficiently supportive family environment, the anger and the desire to kill the child may become very strong. At the root of this desire in the mother's unconscious fantasy that the child suffers and suffer even more: only death can thus save it. Thus we see that, albeit in a dramatically distorted, even in this case is the love that mother feels for her child led her to perform an act so terrible.
The picture I have tried to give is obviously very limited, these are issues that require more extensive processing, but I hope it can still be useful to have a general idea of \u200b\u200bthese phenomena, unfortunately more common than you think or you prefer to believe.