"There's this kind of myth that women couldn't possibly be depressed during pregnancy, [that] this is such a happy time," says Jennifer Payne, a psychiatrist and the director of the Women's Mood Disorders Center at Johns Hopkins University. "The reality is that a lot of women struggle with anxiety and depression during pregnancy as well as during the postpartum period." It's important that women seek treatment, says Payne, because depression during and after pregnancy (called perinatal depression) is treatable, and women with the right treatment do recover.
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