1 in 5 new moms struggle with mental health

Twenty percent of women experience mental health conditions, such as depression or anxiety, during pregnancy and the first year of parenthood.

Kara Zivin, professor of psychiatry and obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan, is part of this statistic. She studies health policy and maternal outcomes, having chronicled her own experience with depression during pregnancy in a memoir.

“When I became pregnant, I wondered how my preexisting depression diagnosis and antidepressant use could affect my baby’s development in utero and after delivery,” Zivin says.

“I knew the risks, but didn’t anticipate how sick I would become.”

In the following Q&A, Zivin, also a policy researcher at the UM Institute for Social Research, discusses the most common complications of childbirth, the pressure of modern motherhood, the importance of a support network, and how open conversation and presence can shift the reality of families facing perinatal mental health challenges:

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