United States: A new study which is from ICES and the University of Toronto found that people who have had concussions are 25% more likely to experience serious mental health problems after having a baby. This means it’s important for new parents with a history of concussions to pay extra attention to their mental well-being.
The study stresses the necessity of early screen for history of prior concussions in pregnancy and the need for a serious and multidimensional lifelong care-as-support program for them.
The study reveals that people who have had a concussion, which is a type of brain injury, tend to suffer severe mental health issues later including psychiatric emergency department visits or self-harm in the years after giving birth, according to lead author Samantha Krueger, a registered midwife and Ph.D. candidate in Health Research Methodology at McMaster University.
As reported by the Medicalxpress, this study was hereby also conducted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Krueger’s Master of Science at the University of Toronto’s Institute of Health Policy, Management and also Evaluation. The research has been published in Journal of Clinical Psychiatry.
“This association was especially strong for people with no prior history of mental health disorders, suggesting that concussion may be a relevant but underrecognized risk factor which is mainly during pregnancy and the postpartum period,” Krueger says.
The study looked at over 750000 women who gave birth in Ontario between 2007 and 2017, analyzing their mental health for up to fourteen years after childbirth. About 11% of the women with concussion history had severe MMM, unlike 7% of the women without concussion history.
This remained the case even when taking into account other variables such as age, income on the individual, history of interpersonal violence and other forms of brain trauma of various types and grades than concussion, depression was 25 per cent more likely in those who had succumbed to concussion.
The results of the study could be deemed especially impressive for the members of the sample without prior history of psychiatric disorders. These studies reveal that at least one previous concussion in a woman noticeably raised hers risk of severe MMM: in the case of MMM-AD, the risk was 33 % higher than it was for the women who could not record any instances of concussion in their past.
Lead author Dr. Hilary Brown states that the physical and emotional stress that comes with parenting may worsen concussions. ”Sleep plays a significant role in the healing after head injury but sleeplessness is reality many new parents have to face.” said Brown who is an Adjunct Scientist at ICES and Associate Professor in the Department of Health and Society at the University of the Toronto Scarborough.
Also the Cognitive impairments, and the sensitivities to light and noise and the stress of caring for a new born can all intensify concussion symptoms and which in turn may also raise the risk of the mental health issues over time says Brown.