Psychological and Biological Markers of the Suicidal Behavior in Post-Partum Depressive Disorder

We performed a retrospective study on 30 subjects having subclinical depression in the past, involved in a psychotherapeutically process in the last 5 years, which gradually returned with a post-partum depressive episode. The subjects were between 20 and 38 years of age, without psychotic disorders, selected by psychological criteria. Our results showed that for patients’ psychopathological profile we found depression, anxiety, affective instability of polymorph aspect, interpretative tendencies. These manifestations correlated significantly with profiles obtained from the Beck and Hamilton scales, often dominated by existential impasse with depressive and anxious tendencies. This study found many risk factors associated with suicidal behavior in patients with post-partum depressive disorder: age under 35, socio-familial and precarious economic status, childhood abuse, disharmonic family relationships, psychotrauma (abuse), emotional instability, accentuated personality, subclinical psychiatric suffering, a heredo-collateral history of mental illness, past history of suicide attempts, low cholesterol levels.