Physician mothers may experience perinatal mood disorders at twice the rate of the general population. The culture of medicine could be part of the problem.
After Funda Bachini, MD, a psychiatrist in Phoenix, Arizona, gave birth to her third child in 2017, she found herself irritable, struggling to sleep, and up at 3 AM writing emails to family members. Something was wrong, she told them. She wasn’t herself. “I was crying a lot, and I was anxious. I had intrusive thoughts of dropping my daughter or something horrible happening.
“I think women who go into medicine, like many professional women, are used to operating and putting on a good face, even under extreme duress,” says Bachini. “For that reason, many of us look like everything is fine on the surface.” Bachini uses the classic swimming duck image. “You see the duck floating calmly on the water’s surface, but underneath, the little feet are paddling like crazy, just trying to stay afloat.
As a licensed clinical social worker, Paige Bellenbaum, LCSW, founding director of The Motherhood Center, who works alongside Birndorf, was trained to recognize mental illness. But after her son’s birth in 2006, she found herself unable access any of that knowledge. In the grip of severe anxiety and depression, Bellenbaum ruminated about her son’s health. She couldn’t sleep. She lost more than 40 pounds in 6 weeks.
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