Research Shows Why Antidepressant May Be Effective in Postpartum Depression

In an Ohio State University study presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, scientists found that an antidepressant commonly prescribed for women with postpartum depression may restore connections between cells in brain regions that are negatively affected by chronic stress during pregnancy. During the study, scientists found that the rats that had been chronically stressed during pregnancy showed depressive-like behaviors after giving birth, and structures in certain areas of their brain were less complex than in unstressed rats. After receiving the drug for three weeks, the rats had no depressive symptoms and neurons in their brains showed normal structural complexity. “We saw that Citalopram was effective in improving mood in stressed mothers and completely reversed the stress effects in areas of the brain that our lab has shown are altered by stress during pregnancy,” said the lead author of the study. Although clinical signs of postpartum depression are clear, researchers are still figuring out what happens in the brain when mothers suffer from this problem. To read more about this study, click here.