‘Avenue of hope’: New treatment being tested in Mass. shows promise for postpartum depression

For some women out there, postpartum depression can cast a long shadow over what they thought would be the happiest time of their life. New research finds that new mothers here in the United States fare worse than their counterparts overseas. But as Boston 25 News anchor Rachel Keller shows us, a groundbreaking new treatment being tested here in Massachusetts is offering new hope. I should be happy. Why am I not happy? With my last child, it kind of put me in a space where it was kind of depressive and it's been kind of like an up and down battle. For Shalia Niles of Dorchester, that battle included bouts of postpartum depression. You might feel very sad about the person that you were before and that you can't be that right at this moment in time because now you have a baby or things just have changed. Your lifestyle has automatically changed. Postpartum depression and baby blues are different. Baby blues usually happen in those sort of first two weeks following a delivery. If they extend beyond two weeks, then we get more concerned about postpartum depression. Dr. Tiffany Morris-Semus is the chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at UMass Memorial Health. About one in seven pregnant postpartum people experience depression and more so in the postpartum period. A recent study out of the University of Texas examined mental health data of new mothers from the U.S., the U.K. and Australia. It found at nine months postpartum, American women reported the lowest depression scores while British moms posted the worst. But after that period, the positions flipped and American moms reported the highest rates of depression. Some of the countries that you're talking about have much better paid family medical leave policies. A lot of moms give birth and then they automatically are like, I want to stay home with my child. And that's not usually an opportunity for a lot of mothers. This is really not something that I think has received the kind of attention that it really deserves. Dr. Kimberly Yonkers wants to change that. She's the chair of the Psychiatry Department at the UMass Chan Medical School. They're one of just four sites in the country running clinical trials on a promising new treatment for postpartum depression. There is an assumption that whatever works for depression will work for postpartum depression. And that may be the case, but it may not be the case. The new treatment is called St. Neuro Modulation Therapy. It stimulates the brain with transcranial magnetic stimulation in a very targeted and precise way. It's a one week treatment, but it's intensive. Every day they get 10 treatments. And when we look at the outcomes for this, it's roughly equivalent to the most effective treatment in psychiatry for depression, which is electroconvulsive treatment. And there are some big pluses with this approach. There are no drugs which could present a concern for breastfeeding, and it's painless and requires no anesthesia. For people who have been suffering, who maybe even didn't realize that they're having as difficult a time as they are having, it can be very much a new avenue of hope. Hope for a mother and for an entire family. A mother with an untreated mental health condition or inadequately treated mental health condition is actually considered an adverse childhood experience for that offspring. And so it can affect the development of the offspring, both in the short and the long term. Shalia Niles now works with new moms as a postpartum doula, hoping she can help other women avoid some of the trials she faced. It's really kind of the American way is what's kind of making women not be able to heal as properly as they should. And I hope that that changes. Everyone we spoke with emphasized how important it is to get appropriate help. Dr. Morisima says mental health conditions during pregnancy and postpartum are the leading cause of maternal mortality. Now the good news is that the clinical trial is still accepting patients. We've put contact information on our website.