Lubu - just found this :
Nursing kids on Prozac
By Emily Sohn
Giving birth is painful enough, but many new mothers then grapple with
another form of anguish: postpartum blues. And in these cases, Mom isn't the
only one in trouble.
Babies with depressed moms tend to weigh less after six months than babies
with happy moms; less weight often means more illness. But the same study
that uncovered this disturbing fact has also turned up hope: Breast-fed
babies grow better if depressed moms take drugs that alleviate depression.
This challenges a popular belief that the traces of Prozac, Paxil, and
similar drugs that seep into breast milk can harm a nursing infant.
"Time and again, doctors are telling nursing women that if they're
depressed, they can't take medicine," says Victoria Hendrick, a psychiatrist
at the University of California-Los Angeles and an author of the study. That
may be true during pregnancy. Other research found that pregnant women who
took Paxil during their third trimester were more likely to have infants
with medical complications than were mothers who took other kinds of drugs.
Yet few studies have looked at how Paxil-like antidepressants, known as
selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), affect life after the womb.
So Hendrick followed a group of nursing babies and their mothers for six
months. Infants with depressed moms who improved on SSRIs grew just as well
as did infants with mentally healthy moms. Both groups grew bigger than
babies whose moms remained depressed, even if they took medicine. "We were
struck by the results," Hendrick says. "It didn't seem like exposure to
antidepressants had any bad effect on the baby's weight." Hendrick's study,
published earlier this year in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, also
found that babies whose mothers had major depressive episodes that lasted at
least two months weighed less than babies whose moms were depressed only
mildly or for shorter periods.
Stopping a mother's depression may be key to avoiding longer-term problems
for her children. UCLA psychologist Constance Hammen found that maternal
depression during the child's first 10 years of life increased his or her
chances of being depressed by age 15. Such kids get into more trouble in
school. They may have more accidents, injuries, allergies, headaches,
asthma, and other health problems, says epidemiologist Myrna Weissman of
Columbia University.
So what's a mother to do? As soon as depression becomes chronic or severe,
then it is time to get some help, even if that means taking antidepressants.
"A woman's depression needs to be treated," Hammen says, "because it does
have an effect on her children."