A Deeper Shade of Blue: A Woman's Guide to Recognizing and Treating Depression in Her Childbearing Years - Hardcover

Nonacs, Ruta

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743254732 ISBN 13: 9780743254731

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2006

Synopsis

Depression affects women almost twice as often as men, with about one in four women suffering from it in her lifetime. While depression may strike at any time, studies show that women are particularly vulnerable during their childbearing years.

Despite the increasing awareness of this deeply concerning issue, many studies and health professionals still continue to focus almost solely on postpartum depression, ignoring the fact that depression is just as likely to affect women while they're trying to conceive and during pregnancy. Now, in this comprehensive, empathetic, and candid book, Dr. Ruta Nonacs, a senior member of the Center for Women's Mental Health at Massachusetts General Hospital and mother of two children herself, confronts the seldom talked-about issues of pregnancy-related depression, including:

Becoming pregnant while being treated for depression

Infertility-related depression and the effects of fertility treatments

Understanding the effects of maternal depression on spouses and family

Postpartum depression and anxiety

Nonacs also addresses the many complicated issues in a woman's life during the span of her childbearing years -- education, career, marriage, childbearing, and child rearing -- and discusses the ways in which depression often takes hold during potentially stressful times. Nonacs identifies many of the symptoms of depression associated with pregnancy and discusses treatments and cures, as well as ways to minimize effects of depression on family and friends.

Straightforward and honest, as well as emotionally sensitive and deeply moving, A Deeper Shade of Blue gives every woman who has suffered from pregnancy-related depression the information she needs to get the best care for herself, during pregnancy and beyond.

Depression affects women almost twice as often as men, with about one in four women suffering from it in her lifetime. While depression may strike at any time, studies show that women are particularly vulnerable during their childbearing years.

Despite the increasing awareness of this deeply concerning issue, many studies and health professionals still continue to focus almost solely on postpartum depression, ignoring the fact that depression is just as likely to affect women while they're trying to conceive and during pregnancy. Now, in this comprehensive, empathetic, and candid book, Dr. Ruta Nonacs, a senior member of the Center for Women's Mental Health at Massachusetts General Hospital and mother of two children herself, confronts the seldom talked-about issues of pregnancy-related depression, including:

Becoming pregnant while being treated for depression

Infertility-related depression and the effects of fertility treatments

Understanding the effects of maternal depression on spouses and family

Postpartum depression and anxiety

Nonacs also addresses the many complicated issues in a woman's life during the span of her childbearing years -- education, career, marriage, childbearing, and child rearing -- and discusses the ways in which depression often takes hold during potentially stressful times. Nonacs identifies many of the symptoms of depression associated with pregnancy and discusses treatments and cures, as well as ways to minimize effects of depression on family and friends.

Straightforward and honest, as well as emotionally sensitive and deeply moving, A Deeper Shade of Blue gives every woman who has suffered from pregnancy-related depression the information she needs to get the best care for herself, during pregnancy and beyond.

About this title

Review

"A Deeper Shade of Blue takes great steps to provide us with a clear road map to a more complete understanding of depression during the childbearing years...Failure to recognize and treat [this] depression...cannot be an option."
-- from the Foreword by Lee S. Cohen, M.D.

"This book is unique because it discusses depression within the context of women's health needs, but it will be useful for anyone seeking in-depth information about the disease. Highly recommended."
-- Library Journal

"Timely and critical. A lot has been written about postpartum depression -- but very little about depression pertaining to the entire process of childbearing and rearing. Dr. Nonacs has done a fantastic job of illuminating and elucidating this condition, in prose that is at once authoritative and empathic. I am thankful for her book in particular and her work in general."
-- Lauren Slater, author of Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century

About the Author

Dr. Ruta Nonacs, M.D., Ph.D., is the associate director of the Center for Women's Mental Health at Massachusetts General Hospital and an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0743254732
• ISBN 13: 9780743254731
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 367