A recently concluded Swedish research suggests that the women who are suffering through a history of psychiatric disorders should undergo careful clinical risk assessment for postpartum psychosis.

The Swedish researchers obtained such evidences that de-destabilize the existing premise that obstetric variables are of only minor importance.

Dr. Kristina Sundguist and her research team from the Karolinska Institute at Stockholm, Sweden, conducted this study and found that the Postpartum psychosis involves rapid development of bizarre delusions, affective symptoms, sleeplessness, and disorganized behavior that threaten the safety of both the baby and the mother. Findings of this research study were recently published in the journal “Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica”.

The research team examined data on 1,133,368 Swedish first-time mothers who gave birth between 1975 and 2003. All these women were followed-up for 3 months after delivery for first hospital admission due to psychotic disorder.

Researchers made use of the ‘Medical Birth Register’ to collect relevant information on obstetric variables, such as the presence of anemia, pre-eclampsia, postpartum hemorrhage, trauma, and preterm birth. Researchers also included many confounding factors including age, year of delivery, and hospital admission due to psychiatric disorder within a period of 2 years before delivery.

The study involved overall 1413 cases of first hospitalization due to postpartum psychosis. Correlating and adjusting for age and year of delivery, the researchers found that postpartum psychosis was associated with respiratory disorder in the neonate, severe birth asphyxia, preterm birth, cesarean section, prenatal death, and small-for-gestational-age infant, at respective hazard ratios of 1.27, 1.39, 1.46, 1.32, 1.59, and 1.42.

However, when the researchers made an attempt to adjust for hospitalization for psychiatric disorders within 2 years before delivery, they discovered that the only variable associated with postpartum psychosis was preterm birth, with a hazard ratio of 1.20.

Further detailed analysis of the study results revealed before the researchers that previous hospitalization for psychiatric disorder increased the risk for postpartum psychosis for more than 100-fold, with the hazard ratio of 109.4.

“Careful clinical risk assessments of postpartum psychosis are crucial among women with a history of psychiatric disorders, whereas complications of pregnancy and delivery only imply small risk increases when measured in absolute terms,” Dr. Kristina Sundguist and her the team concluded .

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