Factors Related to Post-Natal Depression in Australian Women with Epilepsy

 Vajda FJE^a, O Brien TJ^b, Horgan D^a, Graham JE^a, Hitchcock AA^a, Lander CM^c, Eadie MJ^c

 

AFFILIATIONS:

^aDepartment of Medicine and Neurosciences, Royal Melbourne Hospital University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia-3050

^bDepartment of Medicine and Neurosciences, Alfred Hospital and Monash University, Melbourne-3004

^cRoyal Brisbane and Womens Hospital and School of Medicine and Biomedical Science, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia-4027

 

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: Professor FJE Vajda, Department of Medicine and Neurosciences, Royal Melbourne Hospital and University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia 3050. E-mail: vajda@netspace.net.au

 

CITATION: Vajda FJE, et al. (2019) Factors Related to Post-Natal Depression in Australian Women with Epilepsy. J Neuropsychiatr Neurodis, 1(1);1-4

 

COPYRIGHT: © 2019, Vajda FJE, This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

 

ABSTRACT

 

We explored the possibility that certain factors that applied during pregnancy might have influenced the occurrence of depression in the year following pregnancy in a cohort of informed consenting Australian women with epilepsy drawn from the Raoul Wallenberg Australian Register of Antiepileptic Drugs in Pregnancy (RWAPR). The women involved in 29 of 224 consecutive pregnancies (12.9%) followed to 12 months postpartum reported having experienced depression and /or anxiety in the post-natal period. Ten of the 29 had received antidepressant medications. Compared with the 195 pregnancies where there was no post-natal mood disorder, the factors statistically significantly associated with post-natal depression included (i) experiencing depression during or before pregnancy, particularly if that depression was untreated, (ii) not taking folate in preparation for pregnancy, (iii) not breastfeeding, and (iv) having epileptic seizures during labour. Seizures occurring in later pregnancy and after delivery showed non-statistically significant associations with the depression, but antiepileptic drug therapy had no significant effect. These findings suggest that treatment of depression during pregnancy might decrease the risk of post-natal depression in women with epilepsy.

KEYWORDS: Antiepileptic drugs, Breast Feeding, Depression, Epilepsy, Pregnancy

 

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