About six weeks after she gave birth to her first son, Jaya, an immigrant from India to the United States, began to suffer feelings of inadequacy as a mother. She felt sad, helpless, useless to her newborn and husband. She imagined her death and described it to her mother over long-distance calls. "I told her that I felt reckless," she says. "I didn't feel the need to be careful about myself and my safety." Jaya (not her real name) began to cross busy intersections with less caution, hoping the universe might intervene and make her dreams a reality.
Postpartum depression affects nearly one of seven birth parents each year, according to the American Psychological Association. Postpartum obsessive-compulsive disorder and postpartum post-traumatic stress disorder affect another 5 percent and 1 percent of birth parents, respectively. While these mood disorders hit every age, race, ethnicity, and class, immigrant parents, like Jaya, are at an even greater risk—over 40 percent are affected, according to a 2017 study in theJournal of Transcultural Nursing—and face additional challenges to attaining accurate diagnosis and treatment.
[For more of this story, written by Pooja Makhijani, go to https://psmag.com/social-justi...s-in-immigrant-women]
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