The Baby Blues and Perinatal Psychic Disorders: About Prevention and Management

Abstract

The baby blues is a precocious psychic impairment that may occur within the first two weeks following delivery. It is considered a trigger point, and sometimes a decompensation towards more serious postpartum psychiatric disorders. It is as well a hazard, predisposing to abnormal psycho-affective development in infants, otherwise intimately dependent on maternal bonding. Although there have been advances in understanding the psychopathology, the clinical presentations, and the inter-relationship of the condition with other disorders of perinatality, the management however remains unclear and poorly described. There seems to be confusion between indications for mere observation with monitoring on one hand, and the need for psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy on the other hand. This is maintained by the ambiguous distinction between primary baby blues which is milder, and severe baby blues with immediate and late complications that are sometimes neglected. Whereas, intervention may be necessary in a number of cases to prevent adverse outcomes in affected mothers and their infants. In this short paper, we review the management of baby blues according to the severity and we give clues for prevention, based on known protective factors.