In a recent postpartum depression research post on the statistics of postpartum depression in the US and Australia, I received a comment that I felt was very important to share with all of you. The reader shared her belief that one thing scientists will find when they DO track the data on postpartum depression is that many doctors out there won’t diagnose their patients with PPD officially in their charts. Her OB told her that she had postpartum depression and that he was treating her for PPD but that he didn’t want to write that down in her medical record because it might make it harder for her to get medical insurance later should she ever need to self-insure. Instead, he wrote in her chart that she was being prescribed an antidepressant for PMS.

I’ve heard input like this before, from both doctors and patients. It is happening, and I believe that it does have the potential to impact postpartum depression research if the researchers choose to use medical charts to identify the incidence or prevalence of PPD.

While it’s true that if the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented it should remove any barriers to getting health insurance because of pre-existing conditions, it’s also true that a certain percentage of women over the last decades who were diagnosed with PPD never had that diagnosis recorded in their medical history. Just something to think about as we watch postpartum depression research continue to evolve …