All people experience moments of sadness. Usually, these occasions persist for only hours or days. Nearly twenty percent of the people in the world, however, struggle with major depression, in which these moods last several days, weeks, or months. These feelings trigger the development of difficulties functioning in career, family, or social relationships, which can become disabling.

Women who experience signs of depression after becoming pregnant may be diagnosed with perinatal depression. This problem may develop any time after pregnancy begins, or any time thereafter, until the baby is one year old. Typically, however, women who encounter this illness after the child is born are diagnosed with postpartum depression.

Perinatal depression or postpartum depression is linked with a number of causes. These causes may be physical. For instance, females with a personal or familial history of major depression or other mental health problems are very likely to experience perinatal depression or postpartum depression. Moreover, alterations in hormone levels in postpartum mothers, such as decreases in estrogen and progesterone amounts, can result in this illness. Postpartum thyroid malfunctions sometimes cause signs of depression such as exhaustion, irritability, and despair.

At times, mental depression is caused by emotional factors. Mothers often feel fatigued and stressed as they learn to juggle the needs of the new infant. Such feelings are often increased by a lack of assistance from family, friends, or spouse. Financial problems may also assist in causing postpartum depression.

Perinatal depression and postpartum depression often have serious outcomes for both the mother and her infant. Worry and depression may prevent a mother from bonding completely with her baby or being capable of meeting her child's physical and psychological requirements. This may further compound the mother's emotions of insignificance, self-blame, and low self-worth.

The child is also affected by the woman's problems. Failure to bond with his or her mom may cause the child to develop trust problems in personal relationships throughout life. Moreover, infants who do not get their physical or psychological requirements met typically do not grow and develop properly. This condition, called "failure to thrive," may be very serious or even fatal to the child.

Perinatal depression or postpartum depression can harm the entire family. The spouse or partner often feels neglected or unable to help the woman's depression symptoms. This may irreparably wound their relationship. Older kids in the family often have comparable feelings, and develop academic or peer problems as well.

Depression damages the whole family. For this reason, women who develop perinatal depression or postpartum depression need to seek depression treatment as quickly as possible. Several techniques are available, like counseling and medication therapy. Medicines, however, are often dangerous for nursing infants, and sometimes yield unpredictable outcomes because of the tremendous hormonal variations a mother experiences during these tumultuous times. Furthermore, typical counseling approaches are usually time-consuming and expensive.

Two approaches for dealing with depression that do not involve medications and often rapidly show dramatically beneficial outcomes are hypnosis and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). Traditional Hypnotherapy is best used with clients who can be easily entranced or are capable of accepting suggestions without needing to analyze or comprehend them. Ericksonian hypnosis is quite effective for those who tend to overanalyze. These strategies allow individuals to relax and get rid of stress.

For people who are more critical or analytical thinkers, NLP is typically more beneficial. Using NLP, trained professionals offer people depression help by helping them to restructure their mental processes. This method can, quite literally, aid a client think past the depressive condition and overcome it.

Clients can overcome depression by developing NLP tools such as anchoring. They are coached to think of moments when they were happy and controlled their situations. Remembering the event renews these feelings. People are instructed to put two fingers together while experiencing these emotions. The unconscious mind connects the touch of the two fingers with the feelings. Therefore, the finger touch becomes an "anchor."

Then, if the individual begins to feel stressed, he or she triggers the anchor by touching these identical two fingers together again. This brings back feelings of self-control and generates empowerment.

By using another strategy called the Flash, individuals learn to reason away negative emotions. They teach their unconscious minds to instantly substitute positive thoughts for negative ones. When negative thoughts develop, the brain instantly substitutes them for positive responses. After developing this technique, individuals find it nearly impossible to think negative thoughts!

Summary: Perinatal depression and postpartum depression often have harmful results for a mother and her new baby. The remainder of their family is also deeply affected by these conditions. Because of the potential significance of the outcomes of this illness, women with depression need to seek help as soon as symptoms begin. Two quite beneficial approaches that do not use medicine or great outlays of time and money are hypnosis and NLP.

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Alan B. Densky, CH specializes in depression and stress related symptoms as an NGH certified hypnotherapist. He has helped thousands of clients since 1978. He offers hypnotic depression therapy CDs. Visit his Neuro-VISION hypnotherapy website for the hypnosis article library, or watch his free video hypnosis collection.