Emotional Imbalance During Pregnancy

Emotional imbalance is a psychological condition that hampers a person's emotions usually presenting an unexpected change in temper and lacking interest to certain activities. While most expectant mothers feel blissful for the coming of a child, many pregnant women suffer short-lived mental stress or depression especially during their first trimester or even after the baby's delivery.  Depression during pregnancy occurs due to the fact that a woman's hormone levels change rapidly. These fluctuations can influence the activities in the brain that affects the moods of pregnant women. Also, family history of psychological disorder, fertility treatments, high-risk pregnancy, and awful experiences faced by the mother before or during pregnancy, such as physical and emotional trauma, previous abortions and miscarriage, broken relationships, unsupportive family or partner, and unhealthy domestic environment can contribute to the depression and feeling of low self-worth.

Expectant mothers usually exhibit signs and symptoms such as feelings of sadness, loneliness, guilt, or worthlessness with no reason at all, frequent change of moods, insomnia, fatigue, irritability, and loss of interest or pleasure to fun activities and social functions engaged in before. Other symptoms may include loss in appetite, difficulty concentrating, restlessness, and suicidal thoughts. These symptoms may not automatically be indications of a mental disorder, but, still, caution should be observed as this may result to depression.

Depression during pregnancy poses risks both for the mother and the baby. A woman that is depressed can develop suicidal tendencies, poor eating habits, drinking, smoking or drug problems and experience pre-term birth, preeclampsia or even abortion.  The growing fetus will also be endangered as maternal stress can cause emotional and behavioural problems, physical deformity, serious medical condition like high blood pressure, and poor development of the nervous system. Some of these conditions may not be seen right away after birth, but many studies have shown that the mother's stress during pregnancy can have significant effects on the child's behaviour in the future.

There are different styles of managing emotional stress among pregnant women.  Each individual requires a unique therapy management depending on the patient's ability to cope with stress, history, and experiences. Some patients experience only mild and short bouts of depression. Others may suffer severe mental stress that requires serious attention and therapy as it might result to post partum depression. To cope with mild depression, a very strong support system from loved-ones is important and also counselling to help address the condition. Many pregnant women are prone to this psychological condition because sometimes they feel they are alone and single-handedly go through the whole ordeal of motherhood. During the first three months of pregnancy, medical experts usually just advised interpersonal psychotherapy and psychoanalysis to cope with stress but do not give pharmaceutical treatment as this may affect the development of the fetus. After the first trimester and if depression symptoms still persist and worsen, antidepressants such as Selective serotonin uptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and Tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs) may be prescribed. For patients who have not responded to the treatments mentioned above, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is given as a last-resort treatment for severe cases of depression.