Many think that post-partum depression is merely an emotional issue, but it is often a severe vitamin deficiency after pregnancy has leached important nutrients from the mother, such as Omega-3 fatty acids—vital for brain health. So much more work needs to be done with pre- and post-natal nutrition. The medical industry in the U.S. is so highly biased against vitamin and mineral supplementation that they refuse to consider the chemical effects of vet/min deficiencies on the brain.
You reminded me of a woman patient I had. She was 59, just retired from a government job two years before. Neighbors found her on the ground one day. It looked like a stroke at first, but wasn’t. She went to the hospital and they ran tons of tests trying to figure out what was wrong.
She spent months in a very good hospital before being sent to the nursing home to die. They couldn’t do anything for her. She was on a feeding tube, which she pulled out daily, crawled on the floor, couldn’t talk, hit at everyone.
Looking through her records, our facility doctor noticed an odd lab, a copper deficiency. Within 3 weeks of being given a copper supplement, she was talking and thinking again. She ate real food, and became continent again. She was pleasant. Her gait was never back to normal but she could walk across a room. That no one at big, important hospital never noticed is criminal.
Good point. Some of the nurses at one of our work sites have mentioned nutritional issues as a factor for PPD.
The lead actress in HBO's Miss Sherlock, Yūko Takeuchi, committed suicide last fall. There was speculation that it was PPD. Good actress, good future, now gone and her infant child motherless.