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Yes, Postpartum Mental Illness is Real

Yes, Postpartum Mental Illness is Real

Last updated on: August 21, 2026 at 12:35 pm by Mary Pezzulo

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Yes, Postpartum Mental Illness is Real 2026-08-21T12:35:54-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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a mother's hand holding a newborn baby's hand. Postpartum mental illness can affect anyone, including mothers who were excited about the baby and love them very much.

image via pixabay

I just want to say that postpartum depression is real. All kinds of postpartum mental illness are real. And often, the way we respond to them makes it worse.

This is so obvious it should go without saying. But in today’s news cycle, I see a whole lot of trolls on social media claiming it’s not. They are loudly claiming that “women today are too soft,” and that post-partum depression is the result of spoiled women no longer getting to do whatever they want to do. And a lot of those people insist they’re the very best Christians, standing up for family values. So as a Christian and a mom myself, I want to assure you: postpartum mental illness is real. And the way many Christians respond to it makes it worse.

Postpartum depression is a common, serious condition. It can make you feel sad and empty like “normal” depression does, and the people around you will scold you for not being happy at the beautiful gift of life you’ve been given, which makes you feel guilty. It can make you feel numb and detached from the world, as if you’re walking around in a dream. It can make you feel irritable and grouchy, not other people’s idea of a happy mom at all. Yes, in extreme cases, it can make you go all the way off the deep end into a psychotic break. That’s not very common. I’m not specifically saying that that is what happened to Lindsay Clancy, in the big legal case that’s filling our news cycle lately; I have no idea whether it did or not. I’m just saying it’s something that does happen from time to time. After you give birth, it’s often the case that your mental health takes a nosedive. Sometimes, it dives all the way down into psychosis.

And, of course, there are other severe mental health conditions associated with pregnancy and giving birth, and those don’t get nearly enough press. Some women have post-partum anxiety, which makes them hypervigilant and panicked for months after childbirth instead of depressed. Many have prenatal depression or prenatal anxiety while they’re pregnant, and that can get written off as just being emotional from all the pregnancy hormones. Others have postpartum post-traumatic stress disorder, which is NOT just disappointment in a childbirth “not going well.” Childbirth is an extremely complicated, dangerous and painful procedure that can destroy your mental health even if it goes perfectly, but it often goes hideously wrong.

And after it goes wrong, it seems to me that everyone around the new mom often decides they’re going to act in a way that’s the opposite of helpful. In addition to all the other reasons the new mom’s mental health might be wrecked, I think that the reaction of those around her can make the trauma exponentially worse.

I have written before about my nightmare childbirth, with a locally notorious con artist who pretended to be a qualified and experienced lay midwife.

A lay midwife is the kind of midwife who doesn’t have a license to be a midwife but is supposed to just study as an apprentice under other midwives. They are not regulated in any way in the state of Ohio. It’s not illegal to claim you are one even if you have no qualifications at all.

While pregnant, I experienced terrible prenatal depression, but I didn’t know that that was what was happening because I’d never heard of prenatal depression before. I probably would have had a miserable time anyway, but the people around me made it even worse. I was being pressured to not trust the medical establishment, because the medical establishment wasn’t Christian enough or pro-life enough and might have tricked me into using contraceptives. My devout Catholic mother-in-law wouldn’t stop telling me terrible stories of women being hurt by evil secular doctors and insisting everything the obstetrician told me was wrong. My devout Catholic brother-in-law got in on the act and taunted me that sometimes doctors tie a woman’s tubes, a mortal sin, while she’s helpless on the operating table after he talks her into a C-section. My friends at Franciscan University certainly weren’t helpful either. I ended up listening to the hippie granola lay midwife, who often quoted the Bible and had comforting things to say about how childbirth is natural and not at all dangerous, something you could easily do at home without doctors making everything worse. And she nearly killed me.

After twenty-eight hours of unassisted labor with ruptured membranes and a yeast infection (plus a massive overdose of black cohosh), I ended up on an operating table with an obstetrician I’d never met before pulling Adrienne out of my abdomen. The whole time, he grumbled aloud about how stupid I was to trust the midwife. I don’t have a single happy memory of pregnancy or giving birth. After the surgery, I was more traumatized than I can possibly express. I wasn’t able to sleep more than two hours at a time for the next nine months. I couldn’t stand to be touched for a year. I kept panicking and bursting into tears in public. And, yes, I was also very depressed. I thought about hurting myself many times.

Some of the Franciscan crowd were sympathetic and kind, and some were not. I got a lot of sympathy but also a lot of funny reproachful looks for not being happy as a good Catholic mother ought.

“I think I have post-partum depression,” I said to somebody very close to me. “I think I have a very severe case of post partum depression. I think I need some medicine. I won’t take very much, just a few months of antidepressants and then I’ll get off again.”

That person was furious with me. “You DON’T have postpartum depression. Postpartum depression is a myth invented by doctors to sell antidepressants.”

Later on, I was told by another devout Catholic: “We shouldn’t complain about how terrible childbirth is. That would encourage women not to have babies. We need to promote how wonderful and good it is to be a mother.”

My traditionalist Catholic aunt Mimi wrote to me to scold me for saying the midwife did something wrong, warning me that talking like that could ruin a medical professional’s reputation. I found out soon after that she hadn’t even been told the details of my childbirth; she just assumed I was being hysterical, because I’d just had a baby and that’s how new moms are.

My devout Irish Catholic grandmother didn’t want me ruminating about what happened in childbirth. “Enough of this heady stuff!” she insisted to me many times. “All that matters is that that beautiful baby is healthy.”

Somewhere along the line, I found out that severe postpartum mental illness runs in my family.

Granny was a vivacious, talented, outgoing, generous woman. She couldn’t stand to keep still or be cooped up. She loved parties and dancing, vacations to the woods or the beach, thrifting and outlet store shopping, gardening and decorating and cooking. She was so much fun to be around when she was in a good mood, I used to look forward to her visits all year. But when my mother was young, my grandmother suffered from severe postpartum mental illness after every pregnancy. And she was a devout Catholic who never touched birth control and wanted a great big family, which meant she was pregnant or postpartum nearly all the time for two decades. She had nine pregnancies that I know of, and seven live births. While pregnant, she was active and happy. After each pregnancy came the crash.

After each childbirth, my grandfather would go back to his job at the local hospital, where he worked extremely long hours as an internist. Granny was left alone, in bed, crying, totally unable to function for months and months. The children were effectively without a parent. For some of this time, the abusive housekeeper would feed them and tidy up, while also terrorizing them and calling names. After the housekeeper walked off the job, it was my aunts’ job to take care of each other. The oldest child still at home would take over all of the housework and childcare, with no one to look after her. The second oldest would have the job of tending to Granny, bringing her her meals and trying to comfort her. Every time an older child went off to college, the next child in line had to take over all the housework for the little ones. And so it went. None of my aunts or my mother had a nurturing childhood. None of them have good mental health now, because they never got the chance to be children.

I realized that Granny’s insistence on “enough of this heady stuff! All that matters is that the baby is healthy” was what she’d told herself over and over again when the darkness was at its worst. She didn’t have the help she needed. She just had that mantra.

I don’t think the Christian influencers who think postpartum women are spoiled will listen to me. But for anyone who is willing to consider it, I have a different idea on how to talk about postpartum mental illness.

Do you really like big Catholic families with half a dozen kids or more? So do I. I think having a lot of siblings is a wonderful way to grow up. It’s lots of fun to be part of a big family. But if we want to encourage that beautiful lifestyle, we have to have much more respect for what women go through.

Don’t refuse to talk about how hard pregnancy, childbirth and recovery are because you think it will encourage women to get pregnant. Insisting we pretend that pregnancy and childbirth aren’t dangerous and traumatic doesn’t make the suffering go away. It makes it far worse. You ought to care about that because mothers are people who deserve your respect. But at least care about it because postpartum mental illness is also hard on the children. If you want those great big families, be especially kind to the moms who churn them out.

We need to completely lose any stigma surrounding mental health and talking about our feelings. Feelings are important and not shameful. Talk about the heady stuff. Talk about mental illness. Share your own traumatic birth story, if it’s helpful. Be completely understanding with someone who is angry, in tears, or shaking with trauma while pregnant or after birth.

Don’t be one of those people who is happy and excited for a new mom during her pregnancy and then doesn’t do more than drop off a casserole after birth. Check up on her. Bring a present for her as well as for the baby. Talk with her about how she’s feeling as well as how sweet the baby is. Assure her that it’s fine to express how bad she feels, if she feels bad. Offer to help around the house, not just with fun baby-related chores but also with things that aren’t glamorous like cleaning the bathroom. Play with the baby’s new siblings and take them to the park so they have time to just be kids. Ask if Dad needs anything too, so Dad has more time to help Mom. And whatever you do, don’t discourage seeking professional help.

None of that is going to make postpartum mental illness go away. But it can help keep the situation from turning into a catastrophe. And it will make it easier for people to have those wonderful big families we all like.

And please, also be understanding with a woman who has one baby and decides her body and brain can’t take anymore.

Postpartum mental illness is real. It is common, and serious. And the way we respond to it can make it all so much harder.

Don’t be the person who makes everything worse.

There’s enough suffering in the world already.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows an d Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, donate to “The Little Portion” on paypal or Mary Pezzulo on venmo

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