Women suffering from depression during or after pregnancy face a higher risk of suicide, even years later

Women who experience depression during pregnancy or in the year following childbirth have a higher risk of suicide and attempted suicide – risks that persist for years, report two new studies.

ImageCredit...Travis Dove for the New York Times

A team research analyzed the records of almost a million women in Swedish national medical registries from 2001 to 2017, comparing 86,551 women with perinatal depression to 865,510 women who did not. The groups were matched according to age and year of delivery.

In two studies, the team found that depression that begins during pregnancy or shortly after can have troubling implications as long as age 18.

A study, published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open, found that women with perinatal depression had three times the risk of suicidal behavior, defined as an attempt or completion. suicide. The risks were highest in the year following their diagnosis, but although they decreased over time, years later the risks were still twice as high as in women without the disease.

The Another study, published Wednesday in the BMJ, found that women with perinatal depression were more than six times more likely to commit suicide than those without this diagnosis. The number of suicides was small, but it accounted for a significant portion of the deaths of women diagnosed with perinatal depression: 149 of the 522 deaths in this group, or 28.5 percent. For women without perinatal depression, there were 117 suicides out of 1,568 deaths, or 7.5 percent.

Suicide was a major reason for women. ..