About one in 1,000 women within three months of giving birth to their first infant experience a mental illness - such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or depression - that is severe enough to require hospitalization, according to a study published in the Dec. 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Chicago Tribune reports.

Trine Munk-Olsen of the University of Aarhus and colleagues looked at the records of 2,357,942 people born in Denmark, including 630,373 women and 547,431 men who became parents between 1973 and 2005.

The study found that among new parents, 1.03 women per 1,000 births required hospital admission for a mental illness and 0.37 men per 1,000 births required hospital admission, the same rate for men in the general male population (Kotulak, Chicago Tribune, 12/6). Women giving birth to their first infant were about seven times more likely to be hospitalized 10 to 19 days after delivery than women with older infants, the AP/Boston Globe reports. Women giving birth to their first infant also were about four times more likely to be hospitalized with a mental condition than were women with no children. Fluctuating hormone levels and other physical changes after childbirth might explain why some women are at an increased risk of postpartum mental illness, Munk-Olsen said (Tanner, AP/Boston Globe, 12/6). “This may indicate that the causes of postpartum mental disorders are more strongly linked to an altered physiological process related to pregnancy and childbirth than psychosocial aspects of motherhood,” Munk-Olsen said. In a JAMA editorial that accompanied the study, Katherine Wisner, professor of psychiatry and obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, said postpartum mental illness is “a major public health problem” and called for screening programs beginning two weeks postpartum and continuing for one year to diagnose and treat mental illnesses among women (Chicago Tribune, 12/6).

The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation