{"id":3444,"date":"2019-01-18T17:33:42","date_gmt":"2019-01-18T17:33:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/?p=3444"},"modified":"2019-01-18T17:34:28","modified_gmt":"2019-01-18T17:34:28","slug":"dr-sarah-johns-paper-on-postnatal-depression-amongst-the-top-five-most-viewed-articles-in-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/2019\/01\/18\/dr-sarah-johns-paper-on-postnatal-depression-amongst-the-top-five-most-viewed-articles-in-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr Sarah Johns’ paper on postnatal depression amongst the top five most viewed articles in 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

The paper,\u00a0Male infants and birth complications are associated with increased incidence of postnatal depression,<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by Dr Sarah Myers and Dr Sarah Johns<\/a> was amongst the top five most viewed articles in 2018. The analysis was done by the PeerJ Community, the leading publishing group in biological and medical sciences, and found that it was one of the most popular academic contributions within its subject areas, Anthropology, Psychiatry and Psychology, Public Health, and Women’s Health.<\/p>\n

Its study into postnatal depression (PND) found the odds of developing this condition increased by 79% when mothers had baby boys compared to baby girls.<\/p>\n

Overall the researchers identified that women who give birth to males are\u00a071-79% more likely to develop PND. Furthermore, women whose\u00a0births had complications were 174% more likely\u00a0to experience PND compared to those women who had no complications. As a result of their findings,\u00a0Dr\u00a0Sarah Johns\u00a0and Dr Sarah Myers\u00a0conclude that recognising both male infants and birth complications are PND risk factors should help health professionals\u00a0in identifying and supporting women who may be more likely to develop this condition.<\/p>\n

Their research also showed that, while women with a\u00a0tendency towards symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress were always at increased risk of PND, they had reduced odds of developing PND after experiencing birth complications. This is likely because these women\u00a0may receive greater post-birth support\u00a0because their mental health concerns were previously recognised. This finding suggests\u00a0interventions to support women can be effective in preventing PND developing.<\/p>\n

Dr Johns said, \u201cPND is\u00a0a\u00a0condition that is\u00a0avoidable\u00a0and it has been shown that\u00a0giving women at risk extra help and support can make it less likely\u00a0to\u00a0develop. The finding that having a\u00a0baby boy or a difficult birth increases a woman\u2019s risk gives health practitioners\u00a0two new and\u00a0easy ways to identify women who would particularly benefit\u00a0from additional support in the first few weeks and months.\u201d Dr Johns and Dr Myers decided to assess whether there was a relationship between the sex of infants and PND because of\u00a0the known link between inflammatory immune response and the development of depressive symptoms.<\/p>\n

Both the\u00a0gestation of male foetuses and the experience of birth complications have documented associations with increased inflammation, yet, until this study, their relationships with PND were unclear.<\/p>\n

Many known risk factors for depressive symptoms are associated with activation of inflammatory pathways,\u00a0opening up the potential for identifying new risk factors based on their inflammation causing effects \u2013 an idea supported by this study which\u00a0used complete reproductive histories of 296 women from contemporary, low\u00a0fertility<\/a>\u00a0populations.<\/p>\n

The paper\u00a0was published in\u00a0Social Science & Medicine\u00a0<\/em>and received coverage in outlets such as\u00a0Huffington Post<\/a>,\u00a0The Independent<\/a><\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Daily Mirror<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The paper,\u00a0Male infants and birth complications are associated with increased incidence of postnatal depression,\u00a0by Dr Sarah Myers and Dr Sarah Johns was amongst the top … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40284,"featured_media":3314,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[159347,124,70,6600],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3444"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3444"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3446,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3444\/revisions\/3446"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sac-news-events\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}