ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — When you think about mental health conditions related to pregnancy, you probably think, for example, postpartum depression begins after birth. But some conditions can start even before a bump appears! Classified as perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, these conditions can occur from conception up to a year after birth.
You’re pregnant or have just given birth – and your dog is talking to you – and you can’t sleep. This could be a sign of perinatal psychosis.
Christine Certain, LMHC, Perinatal Mental Health Certified at Certain Counseling says, “I think one of the things that’s hard is that when someone’s experiencing this, to them, everything is very real.”
Perinatal psychosis is when the pregnant or postpartum person is gripped by mania that changes how they see the world.
Certain explains, “Say for example, maybe they just gave birth, but they don’t believe they gave birth to a person, they believe they gave birth to a lion.”
Perinatal psychosis is rare, only affecting one or two of every thousand births, but that means out of the 3.6 million people who gave birth in 2025, at least 3,600 people had it.
“The dangers of not getting a diagnosis or treatment especially for a psychosis is that really bad things can happen,” said Certain.
Of the women with psychosis, there is a four percent risk of the mother wanting to harm herself and her baby.
Certain told Ivanhoe, “We don’t wanna stigmatize. We don’t wanna tell anyone that, you know, that they’re flawed or that they have done something wrong because it’s not something that they had control over.”
Once diagnosed, Certain says treatment needs to occur ASAP.
“The gold standard treatment for care is to be able to place the mothers into a facility that can receive the mother and the baby so that they don’t have to be separated,” explained Certain.
You can find a list of inpatient and outpatient facilities that are covered by some insurance policies on postpartum.net.
The New York Times says sometimes people with perinatal psychosis get mistakenly diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression, therefore medicated incorrectly. However, there is no doubt that the condition exists, and it has been reported as far back as fifth century BC.
Contributors to this news report include: Marcy Wilder, Producer; Roque Correa, Editor.
Source:
https://postpartum.net/perinatal-mental-health/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/health/postpartum-psychosis-dsm-diagnosis.html
https://apnews.com/article/how-many-us-births-2025-7d1e0ed60d47cda819eb122b6cb78fdb
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-birth-rates-highest-in-usa/
https://postpartum.net/get-help/intensive-perinatal-psych-treatment-in-the-us/
* For More Information, Visit: Postpartum Support International
