And yet, perinatal mood disorders are still woefully under-recognized ― post-partum anxiety, for instance, isn’t even listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ― and also under-researched. A study published this week in the journal Trends in Neuroscience shows that postpartum mood disorders involve fundamentally different brain activity from those not occurring in new mothers. The analysis revealed that mood disorders occurring after birth involved very different patterns of activity from depression and anxiety in people who did not recently give birth. People with generalized anxiety and depression showed a hyper-active amygdala in response to emotional cues, while new mothers showed a decreased amygdala response to emotional cues (except those related to their infant). To visualize how different areas of the brain are activated by depression and anxiety in new mothers compared to non-mothers, check out the diagram below:

Source: Huffington Post January 27, 2017 20:59 UTC