Even the most hardened people are not immune. Laure Manaudou recently confided that she had postpartum depression for a year. “I felt overwhelmed, suffocated, it was too much…”, has explained the swimmer and Olympic champion in a video on RawOctober 11. “As a sportswoman, I’m supposed to be tough… However, I was tired, irritated, I had the impression of not knowing how to take care of my son, the third. » Laure Manaudou is one of the many women who have suffered from postpartum depression, one of the subjects raised by the French Society of Perinatal Medicine during its last national days, in Lille, from October 12 to 14.
According the 2021 national perinatal survey, conducted among 12,723 women, published in October, 16.7% of women who gave birth in March 2021 showed signs of postpartum depression two months after giving birth. These scores, measured for the first time, were calculated based on the ten questions of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS). “These figures are consistent with other countries similar to France, with a rate of postnatal maternal depression varying from 15% to 20%, with a peak frequency at two to four months and another at six months”, notes Camille Le Ray, researcher at Inserm and gynecologist-obstetrician at the Port-Royal maternity hospital (Paris), who coordinated the study. Fathers or co-parents are not spared, but there is less data on the subject.
“These figures worry usobserves Anne Chantry, midwife and researcher at Inserm. This means that one in seven women is not well after childbirth, which represents more than 100,000 women a year. This is worrying from a societal point of view, because most pregnancies are wanted. The woman’s condition would have deteriorated during pregnancy and/or after childbirth. »
Nothing to do with the baby blues
Postpartum depression is distinct from the baby blues, an expected transient event that affects 30% to 80% of women giving birth within a week, and lasts seven to ten days. As with other types of depression, “These women lose all forms of envy, have a feeling of sadness, isolation, which can affect their health and that of their baby”notes Anne Chantry. “Mothers have a feeling of inability to take care of their baby, think that others will be better able to do so, which is specific to postpartum depression”describes Sylvie Viaux-Savelon, perinatal child psychiatrist at the Croix-Rousse hospital in Lyon.
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