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After-birth Depression Blamed for Woman"s Suicide
A new mother apparently suffering from postpartum mental illness fell to her death from a narrow 12th-floor ledge of a Chicago hotel, eluding the lunging grasp of firemen called to help.
The Chicago Tribune reported Tuesday that the mother of a 3-month-old daughter, Melanie Stokes, 41, was said to be suffering from a severe form of after-birth depression called postpartum psychosis, an extremely rare biological response to rapidly changing hormonal levels that can result in hallucinations, delusions, severe insomnia and a drastic departure from reality.
"That was a monster in my daughter"s brain," said Stokes" mother, Carol Blocker. "The medicine took no effect at all, while her grief was so strong that nothing could make up for it. I"m just glad she didn"t take her daughter with her."
Virtually all new mothers get postpartum blues, also called the "baby blues", which are brief episodes of irritability, moodiness and weepiness. About 20 percent of birthing women experience postpartum depression, which can be triggered by hormonal changes, sleeplessness and the pressures of being a new mother. It is often temporary and highly treatable.
But The Tribune said what scientists suspect Stokes was battling, postpartum psychosis, is even more extreme and is considered a psychiatric emergency. During postpartum psychosis—a very real disorder that affects less than 1 percent of women, according to the National Institute of Mental Health—a mother might hear voices, have visions, feel extremely agitated and be at risk of harming the child or herself.
Often the consequences are tragic. In 1987, Sheryl Masip of California told a judge that postpartum psychosis made her drive a Volvo over her 6-week-old son. Latrena Pixley of Washington, D. C., said the disorder was why she smothered her 6-week-old daughter in 1922. And last year, Judy Kirby, a 31-year-old Indianapolis mother allegedly suffering from postpartum psychosis, sped into oncoming traffic and plowed into a minivan, killing seven youngsters, including three of her own.