Are Women Who Cannot Breastfeed More Prone To PPD? - Katie Monarch, L.C.S.W. (VIDEO)

Katie Monarch, a licensed clinical social worker, explains if women are more likely to experience postpartum depression/PPD if they are not allowed to breastfeed their newborns.

Katie L. Monarch:
Breastfeeding is a huge issue for moms with postpartum depression, and what we try to do is we try to encourage them to continue to breastfeed if they started for as long as they can. For certain situations, moms cannot breastfeed. If mom is on a medication that she needs to make sure that she is stable and make sure that she has quality of life, then the bottle-feeding is what she needs to do.

We do help moms in working through some of that guilt and some of those questions that they may be having about breastfeeding, and it is an issue, but there’s definitely help and validation that she is doing a good job, making sure that the baby is on the right formula, etcetera. But breastfeeding is the number one choice, but some moms just can’t and it doesn’t make them a bad mom.

About Katie L. Monarch, L.C.S.W.:
Katie Monarch is the Project Director for the Post Partum Depression program at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, California, where she helped design an education-focused facility. At this hospital all new mothers are screened for postpartum depression through the Bridges for Newborns program using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS).

Visit Katie L. Monarch at St. Joseph Hospital