“I thought the blues were all part of being a new mom,” said the woman who was screened and referred for treatment at her pediatrician’s office after the birth of her second child. She told a news outlet in Raleigh, N.C., that she was grateful for the screening. “I’m able to be the mother that both my kids deserve,” she said.
The story spotlighting postpartum depression (PPD) aired in February 2017, just after North Carolina Medicaid established payment for the new maternal depression screening code (96161), encouraging primary care clinicians to screen for PPD at infant visits. “If a mother is unhappy, having depression, she’s not going to interact with her baby the same way as a non-depressed mother,” said Christoph Diasio, M.D., FAAP, who performed the screening.
An AAP policy statement and technical report, titled Incorporating Recognition and Management of Perinatal Depression into Pediatric Practice, highlight the impact of PPD on the infant, the mother-infant dyad and the family, recognizing what we know about the effect of toxic stress on early brain development and the buffering effect of resilience. The documents, from the Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health, update a 2010 clinical report. They are available at https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2018-3259and https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2018-3260 and will be published in the January issue of Pediatrics.
[For more on this story by Marian Earls, M.D., M.T.S., FAAP, go to http://www.aappublications.org...ataldepression121718]
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