Depression Days

Depression Days - Hypothyroidism

Today I was reflecting on the page I added to my website yesterday. It was a page on post natal or post partum depression. In my blog yesterday I commented on whether you can get post natal depression outside of the suggested time of 1 year following birth. I didn't suffer from depression until a couple of years after my 3rd birth.

As I was thinking about this today, I thought about part of my content yesterday in which I talked about hypothyroidism, and how this can cause depression, also has similar symptoms to depression and how pregnancy and hormonal changes to your body can bring the onset of hypothyroidism.

I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism last year also, probably a couple of months before I was diagnosed with depression, although I suffered from depression for a while before I saw my GP.
Anyway, my thinking now is although I didn't suffer from depression until a couple of years after the birth of my 3rd child, I also have the underactive thyroid - which was possibly brought on by pregnancy hormonal changes, which could have caused or contributed to the depression. So if this is the case, then the pregnancy ultimately did contribute to the depression - therefore post natal depression in my opinion can occur over 1 year after the birth.

Or it could all just be a big coincidence and the fact that I had 3 reasonably close pregnancies may have had nothing to do with either the hypothyroidism or the depression.

I wonder

Take care all
ShezzP
www.depressiondays.com

posted by Shezz @ 4:37 AM