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14.2.1: Learning Objectives and Introduction

  • Page ID
    228101
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    Learning Objectives

    • Describe the diagnostic criteria for mood disorders.
    • Understand age, gender, and ethnic differences in prevalence rates of mood disorders.
    • Identify common risk factors for mood disorders.
    • Know effective treatments of mood disorders.

    a mother holding her baby .png

    Perinatal depression following child birth afflicts about 5% of all mothers. An unfortunate social stigma regarding this form of depression compounds the problem for the women who suffer its effects. [Image: CC0 Public Domain]

    The actress Brooke Shields published a memoir titled Down Came the Rain: My Journey through Postpartum Depression in which she described her struggles with depression following the birth of her daughter. Despite the fact that about one in 20 women experience depression after the birth of a baby (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013), postpartum depression—recently renamed “perinatal depression”—continues to be veiled by stigma, owing in part to a widely held expectation that motherhood should be a time of great joy. In an opinion piece in the New York Times, Shields revealed that entering motherhood was a profoundly overwhelming experience for her. She vividly describes experiencing a sense of “doom” and “dread” in response to her newborn baby. Because motherhood is conventionally thought of as a joyous event and not associated with sadness and hopelessness, responding to a newborn baby in this way can be shocking to the new mother as well as those close to her. It may also involve a great deal of shame for the mother, making her reluctant to divulge her experience to others, including her doctors and family.

    Feelings of shame are not unique to perinatal depression. Stigma applies to other types of depressive and bipolar disorders and contributes to people not always receiving the necessary support and treatment for these disorders. In fact, the World Health Organization ranks both major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar disorder (BD) among the top 10 leading causes of disability worldwide. Further, MDD and BD carry a high risk of suicide. It is estimated that 25%–50% of people diagnosed with BD will attempt suicide at least once in their lifetimes (Goodwin & Jamison, 2007).


    Mood Disorders by Anda Gershon and Renee Thompson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available in our Licensing Agreement.


    This page titled 14.2.1: Learning Objectives and Introduction is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Michael Miguel.