FRIDAY, Dec. 2 (HealthDay News) -- Major depression and
conflicts with intimate partners increase the risk of suicide among
pregnant women and new mothers, a new study indicates.
"We have a more complete picture now of who these women are and what led up to these tragic events," study author Dr. Katherine Gold, an assistant professor of family medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School, said in a university news release. "These deaths ripple through families and communities and cause a lot of sorrow and devastation."
She and her colleagues analyzed 2,083 suicides among women aged
15 to 54 that were recorded over five years in the U.S. National
Violent Death Reporting System.
More than half of the women who killed themselves had a known
mental health diagnosis. Nearly half were in a depressed mood prior
to their suicide.
"Previous research has shown that depressive disorders affect 14 to 23 percent of pregnant and postpartum women and anxiety disorders affect 10 to 12 percent," senior study author Dr. Christie Palladino, an obstetrician/gynecologist with the Education Discovery Institute at Georgia Health Sciences University, said in the news release.
"We've known that major depression is a factor in suicide for a long time," she said. "But this data tells us, for example, that pregnant and postpartum women had a much higher incidence of conflicts with intimate partners than their counterparts."
The study also found that new mothers who committed suicide were
more likely to be depressed in the two weeks before they killed
themselves.
Hispanic women were far more likely to commit suicide while
pregnant (10 percent of such suicides) or within a year of
pregnancy (9 percent of such suicides), compared to when they were
not pregnant (4 percent of suicides among non-pregnant women).
The study appears online ahead of print publication in the
journal
General Hospital Psychiatry.
"As a society, we tend to avoid talking about suicide," Gold said. "But it's important to try to understand and talk about risk factors if we are going to address suicide from a public health perspective."
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more
about
suicide prevention.