I’m trying to educate myself about perinatal psychiatric illness. I’ve recently learned that I wasn’t technically correct when I use the term perinatal mood disorders. Mood disorders include postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. Anxiety disorders, like postpartum anxiety or postpartum OCD, are not mood disorders. They’re different. Most people probably wouldn’t care about such splitting of hairs, but I’m a word person and I always want to be so careful about being correct when I can. (OCD, anyone?)
Since I went through postpartum OCD myself, I always want to make sure to "represent" for those of us with anxiety. Stacy Larsen recently wrote a great story in the Portland Family Magazine about postpartum anxiety disorders. It was well done, and reminded me so much of what I went through when my son was born. It was like reading about myself. If you have been through or are going through some form of postpartum anxiety, I think you’ll really find this interesting.
