Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders: A Lexicon of Metaphors

Abstract

Undiagnosed and untreated postpartum mental health disorders represent a silent health crisis. The aim of this paper was to develop a lexicon of metaphors women use to describe their postpartum mood and anxiety disorders to assist holistic nurses in recognizing as early as possible these struggling mothers. Mothers may not know the medical terminology to articulate their mental health problems and may turn to using metaphors. The metaphors included in this lexicon were obtained from the author's earlier qualitative studies of metaphors women used to describe their experiences of postpartum depression, postpartum panic disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder due to traumatic childbirth. In this lexicon these metaphors are organized by these three mental health disorders and includes a table of definitions of each metaphor along with examples of the context of the metaphors represented by quotes from the mothers. Metaphors can be keys that open and unlock doors that stand between holistic nurses and their patients. Being attentive to metaphorical language women use to describe how they are feeling after giving birth can be an innovative approach holistic nurses can use to identify these vulnerable women and provide an opportunity to nurture and empower new mothers.

Posttraumatic Growth after Postpartum Psychosis

“…Nurses and other health care practitioners who wish to learn more about postpartum psychosis are referred to updated guidelines on screening and diagnosis of postpartum psychosis and guidelines for treatment and management of postpartum psychosis from the American College of Obstetricians andGynecologists (2023a, (2023b). For a nursing perspective on postpartum psychosis, two publications from the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric, and Neonatal Nurses include information on postpartum psychosis (Beck, 2020b(Beck, , 2021.…”

“…Four recent qualitative studies provide insight into the experience of postpartum psychosis by using women's own voices (Beck, 2020a(Beck, , 2020bForde et al, 2019;Jefferies et al, 2021;Wass et al, 2022). None of these studies, however, specifically examined posttraumatic growth.…”

Identifying Holistic Nursing Research Priorities for 2023–2026

“…Holistic nursing research is key to generating knowledge and discovering other ways of examining human conditions. For example, women describing postpartum mood and anxiety disorders provided vital information that could help enhance understanding of and identify which patients may have catastrophic consequences (Beck, 2022). Exemplar studies reflecting the variations in designs to discover the lived experiences of individuals and nurses and the research priorities are published in holistic journals (see Table 4).…”