Ptsd from labor

SAMHSA’s National Helpline | SAMHSA

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• SAMHSA’s National Helpline is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders.

  Also visit the online treatment locator.

SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357) (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service), or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations.

Also visit the online treatment locator, or send your zip code via text message: 435748 (HELP4U) to find help near you. Read more about the HELP4U text messaging service.

The service is open 24/7, 365 days a year.

English and Spanish are available if you select the option to speak with a national representative. Currently, the 435748 (HELP4U) text messaging service is only available in English.

In 2020, the Helpline received 833,598 calls. This is a 27 percent increase from 2019, when the Helpline received a total of 656,953 calls for the year.

The referral service is free of charge. If you have no insurance or are underinsured, we will refer you to your state office, which is responsible for state-funded treatment programs. In addition, we can often refer you to facilities that charge on a sliding fee scale or accept Medicare or Medicaid. If you have health insurance, you are encouraged to contact your insurer for a list of participating health care providers and facilities.

The service is confidential. We will not ask you for any personal information. We may ask for your zip code or other pertinent geographic information in order to track calls being routed to other offices or to accurately identify the local resources appropriate to your needs.

No, we do not provide counseling. Trained information specialists answer calls, transfer callers to state services or other appropriate intake centers in their states, and connect them with local assistance and support.

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Last Updated: 08/30/2022

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What is postpartum PTSD and why do women experience it?

1) Childbirth itself is a powerful physiological and emotional event, no matter how it happens.

2) High uncertainty of childbirth (when it will start, how it will pass, who will help, who will be there) — many women face such uncertainty for the first time in their lives.

3) Unrealistic expectations and common myths: inadequate preparation for childbirth can reinforce naive and idealistic ideas about childbirth (“the main thing is to relax and everything will be ok”, “if you trust the doctor, nothing bad will happen”, “the main thing is to do ( insert any advice) and it will be easy”, “real women give birth without pain”, “caesarean birth is laziness”).

4) Medicalization of childbirth is a trend of the last hundred years. This refers to the situation when a woman becomes an object of manipulation, without taking into account her experiences, emotions and the basic physiology of childbirth (for example, the need for personal space and privacy during the process or adequate anesthesia).

5) Violence in childbirth: unfortunately, it is a common story not only in Russia. Many women find that in childbirth they are much more vulnerable than normal life and cannot protect themselves in the way they expected and are used to.

6) The experience of violence, especially sexualized violence (which, according to WHO estimates, every fifth woman goes through), can be a factor that leads to retraumatization (repeated acute experience of an old trauma).

7) Lack of non-medical support in childbirth: in humans (and even some primates), childbirth is a social event in which other members of the group participate. This gives a sense of security, security and reduces anxiety, which directly affects hormonal processes. Despite dozens of studies and WHO recommendations, many women are still left with this experience alone. And this is still considered the norm.

8) Lack of care after childbirth: research shows that in the event of a traumatic event, those who receive a lot of support from loved ones immediately after childbirth are more likely to cope. Modern women in the first weeks after childbirth often remain completely alone.

How does PTSD appear after childbirth?

- You cry, remembering your birth.

- Avoid everything related to this topic.

- Fanatical study of everything related to this topic.

- Telling your story over and over in almost the same words.

- Cannot listen calmly to stories of childbirth.

- You have nightmares about childbirth.

You are not sleeping well.

- Anxiety and the feeling that you need to be on the alert all the time do not let go.

- You miss a doctor's appointment 4 weeks after giving birth and simply can't go back to the hospital where you gave birth.

- You do not contact your midwife / doula / doctor.

- You can't touch where the seam is.

- You are returning to your bad habits.

- Unpleasant memories suddenly come over you (flashbacks).

When should you contact a specialist?

If the symptoms of PTSD described above appear after childbirth, then it makes sense to go to a psychologist, psychotherapist and (or) a psychiatrist. Usually women themselves notice that they cannot “let go” of the experience of childbirth. Weeks, months, and sometimes years pass, but part of the psyche seems to be frozen in the moment where the traumatic event occurred. Sometimes loved ones are angry or surprised that a woman is still worried about her birth.

In general, it's always a good idea to look for available support options. Being out of order is normal, it happens. But what matters is what each of us does with it.

Post-traumatic stress disorder after childbirth

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is called the Vietnamese syndrome.

It was first studied in the USA because of the psychological problems of Vietnam War veterans.

It usually occurs after events that are unbearable for psyche, such as a natural disaster, terrorist takeover, military action, rape or car accident.

The biochemistry of the brain changes, and then a person is not just sees a terrible event in nightmares, he seems to live it again and again, often with panic attacks.

According to one theory, this is due to a malfunction in the hippocampus, the part of the brain that is responsible for working with memory.

As a result, a stressful memory is not "archived", and the body relives it over and over again as if it were happening again in reality.

Long thought to be a natural event like childbirth, cannot cause PTSD.

But now there is more and more research that if during childbirth a woman experienced: intense fear, helplessness, extreme pain or the threat of death , then she may subsequently develop post-traumatic stress disorder.

I found 350 publications on this topic on the international scientific portal PubMed.

According to one study (Di Blasio, et al. Symptoms of Postpartum PTSD and Expressive Writing), even in “regular” births (healthy mothers who gave birth to healthy babies without surgery) 23% of women on the second day after childbirth give a picture of post-traumatic syndrome.

According to the British Birth Trauma Association, in the UK alone, about 30,000 women develop postpartum PTSD per year.

Approximately ,200,000 90,082 women in the United States experience an injury during childbirth each year.