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HONG KONG (Reuters) - Forty percent of women who suffer depression after
childbirth are abused either physically or emotionally by their partners,
researchers in Australia said on Wednesday, calling on health workers to be more
alert to such cases.
"That is a very important message to get out to
health professionals," said Hannah Woolhouse at Murdoch Children's Research
Institute in Victoria, Australia.
"If they are working with women with
post-natal depression, they should consider the possibility that partner
violence may be contributing to that."
Possible solutions included
offering treatment to the abusive partner, counseling for such couples, or even
shelter for abused women, she said in a telephone interview.
In their
study of 1,305 first-time mothers, Woolhouse and colleagues found that 210, or
16 percent, reported depression in the 12 months following delivery.
"
Around 40 percent of women reporting depressive symptoms also reported intimate
partner violence," the researchers wrote in the paper published in BJOG: An
International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.
After taking into
account other possible reasons such as age and unemployment, the risk of
experiencing post-natal depression was three times higher for women who suffered
emotional abuse compared with women who did not suffer any abuse, they
said.
The risk was four times higher for those who experienced physical
abuse.
"Emotional abuse is a lot more common than physical abuse ... and
it is just as damaging," said Woolhouse.
The study also found that most
women first reported depression more than six months after delivery.
"In
Australia and the UK, screening for depression takes place in the first few
months after delivery so they are likely to miss maybe over half of the cases of
depression," Woolhouse said. "We would be recommending that professionals
regularly enquire about women's mental and emotional
wellbeing."
http://news.yahoo.com/womens-post-natal-depression-linked-partners-abuse-study-091416712.html
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