Based on the results of a recent study on 14,000 newly new ones, conducted by a team from the University of Cambridge and published in the magazine Maternal and Child Healthbreastfeeding would reduce the risk of 50% Post-partum depression.
Especially, those women who want to breastfeed but for some reason they cannot do it have a risk of depressive episodes much more than doubled.
The benefits ofbreastfeeding For children they are well known, so much so that the World Health Organization recommends it for at least the first six months, where possible. However, the impact of the same on mothers had never been adequately investigated and the studio fills an important scientific gap and opens a thorny debate.
If it is true, in fact, that today the Post-partum depression It is easily identified and treated, usually with antidepressant drugs, unfortunately it is equally true that the intake of these drugs almost always obliges the woman to interrupt breastfeeding.
The question is therefore spontaneous: but if stop breastfeeding In those who want it, they have effects, as can be understood, somewhat harmful to mood, because it makes the woman feel a “failure” as a mother, inadequate and guilty, how useful it can be to administer antidepressant drugs who force to remove such an important protective factor for the psychic well -being of women.
Obviously the cases must be evaluated one by one and there is no solution that is good for everyone, but it is important to underline how today there are Cognitive behavioral psychotherapeutic interventions Which can be equally effective in drugs in counteracting depressive symptoms and that do not have the side effect of having to stop breastfeeding, with the aforementioned complications that make it difficult to evaluate whether the benefits or disadvantages of therapy are more.
On the other hand, as the authors rightly suggest, if the women who want to breastfeed but discover they cannot do it are so at risk, it is highly recommendable to take into account and monitor the mood To intervene early where there were signs of depression in progress, possibly with non -pharmacological strategies.
It is easy to hypothesize, in fact, that in these cases the drop in mood tone is associated with chains of negative and self -critical thoughts, unjustified sensations of personal failure, as if a mother who cannot breastfeed was not a “good” mother or was lower than the others, which can be easily identified and contrasted with Cognitive behavioral strategies.