Postpartum Depression Among Immigrant Women: A Qualitative Exploration

The article provides a thorough examination of the prevalence and characteristics of postpartum depression among immigrant women. It integrates qualitative insights from narrative syntheses and systematic reviews with quantitative data to explore how cultural backgrounds, socioeconomic status, and access to healthcare services influence these women's experiences. Key findings highlight that immigrant women often face unique challenges, such as language barriers, lack of social support, and cultural stigmas associated with mental health, which can exacerbate postpartum depression symptoms. The review emphasizes the need for culturally sensitive healthcare practices and policies to better address the needs of this vulnerable population. By combining qualitative richness with quantitative rigor, the study offers a comprehensive understanding that could inform future interventions and support systems aimed at improving maternal mental health outcomes among immigrant women.

Running head: POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
Executive Summary
Postpartum depression is increasingly becoming a point of concern for modern psychology.
Women, some of them, feel a terrible sense of gloom just after childbirth or during pregnancy.
Often overwhelmed with the burden of the new responsibility, many new mothers find it difficult
to cope. This trait is particularly higher in the women who are living in a place that is different
from their mother country. This makes it important to learn more about these symptoms and
mental condition of the immigrant women to understand what emotions they feel and what sets
their depression on its way and how to provide them with the c are that would help care givers to
ensure these women’s mental stability. This paper would be trying to evaluate the depth of the
problem and which and how can strategies can be adopted to avoid such problems.

2POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Background and rationale................................................................................................................3
Research questions...........................................................................................................................5
Research objectives.........................................................................................................................5
Theoretical framework.....................................................................................................................6
Research design...............................................................................................................................8
Sample size....................................................................................................................................11
Ethical issues.................................................................................................................................12
Timeline.........................................................................................................................................12
Limitations.....................................................................................................................................13
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................14
References......................................................................................................................................16

3POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
Introduction
During the first few days of pregnancy and after childbirth, a woman experiences a
whirlpool of emotions. These emotional experiences can be of a wide variety and the new mother
may feel in several different ways including happiness, bliss and joy, which are most
understandable for a mother. However, she also becomes prone to emotions that are not so
gleeful. Sadness and helplessness are the two most widely experienced emotions that a new
mother comes across, which is often referred to as “baby blues” (O'hara and McCabe 2013).
While most of the women who experience these emotional turmoil post childbirth, overcome the
problems within one or two weeks, there are some who experience something more severe and
extreme (Bina and Harrington 2016). The grim and gloomy feelings can be attributed to sudden
hormonal changes while pregnancy and shortly after childbirth. While this is a serious issue for
even the people who are living in the “advanced” countries, who have all the privileges and
advantages of the world, one should try and imagine the ordeal that migrant women face.
Anxiety can become much more intense when a mother is already facing problems of
persecution and has to leave her own country to seek refuge in another. The current report would
take a look into the problems that entail of becoming a mother who has to flee the securities and
assurances of her own home and try to understand the severity and the magnitude of the problem
(Mehta et al. 2014).
Background and rationale
Right after childbirth the hormone levels in a woman’s body drop, leading to chemical
changes in her brain which cause mood swings. Sleep deprivation that arises from the need to
take care of the newborn child can lead to further deterioration in the health condition of the
women. Postpartum depression is not a weakness of character, it is a medical and mental
complication that arises from childbirth. When this postpartum psychosis develops among

4POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
women, it is of dire need to efficiently tackle the issues because otherwise it would lead to long
lasting depression that may have a permanent impact on the psyche on the mothers (Putnam et
al. 2017). If not treated, postpartum depression (PPD) can become a big obstacle while carrying
out daily routines and chores. That is what that makes the current research so important: without
treating PPD, women who are suffering from this cannot be ensured a life that is safe and
secured. It is the responsibility of the society to extend its help to the women and give them a
healthy and good life (De Choudhury et al. 2014).
Migration is one of the most important issues in the modern day world. When countries
and regions are riddled with war and civil problems, many people are facing persecution in their
own countries and are being forced to leave their homelands. The political, social and mental
pressure that these people experience are traumatizing, forever changing their lives. (Falah-
Hassani et al. 2015) When women who have already been forced to migrate are giving birth in a
different country, the complexities intensify and the impact is compounded exponentially. There
are not many research or literature that talks about the trauma and the hardships faced by
migrating mothers and how the political and personal spheres merge to pose as a monolithic
obstacle in their lives. What little research and literature are available mostly talk about
quantitative aspects of a research and try to give statistical data that try to answer questions that
yield numerical results, pertaining to the knowledge of “how many?” or try to give trends about
what percentage or fraction of the migrating women face post childbirth mental problems. The
current research would try to look into the humane aspects of dealing with a problem that tries to
provide mental support to those who are already undergoing physical hardship (Alhasanat, Fry‐
McComish and Yarandi 2017).

5POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
Although there has been some work on PPD, the effects of it on immigrant women has
not been given the importance it needs. That is probably because it is not seen as a feasible
problem yet. Despite being ignored or overlooked, it is a real issue and needs to be addressed
promptly (Katz and Gagnon 2016). This current paper aims to shed light on this matter and try to
make people aware about the problems PPD creates for the women who have to migrate.
There is a significant gap in the available literature that shows the complexity of the
psychological problems that the women have regarding PPD and the effects it has when coupled
with the problem of immigration. The cultural, social and spiritual aspects are not taken into
account as much as they should be (O’Mahony et al. 2013). This paper would try to bridge that
gap and give possible solutions that may help to give the women suffering from PPD more
support as well as trying to sympathize with their problems rather than shunning them away to
take yup the burden on their own.
Research questions
 What are the effects of postpartum depression on the immigrant women?
 How do the social and political merge with the personal spheres and how do they
shape the mental condition of the immigrant women suffering from PPD?
Research objectives
 To analyze the conditions that the new mothers face when they have to give birth
in a country they are forced to live in
 To come up with feasible solutions and plans that would aim to give support these
new mothers
 Help more people to know and understand about this issue and help to spread
empathy so that nobody has to feel mentally pressurized anymore

6POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
Theoretical framework
There are still not enough literature or theories that can be a formidable base for the
trauma that the women face in this issue. Even less amount of research has happened when it
comes to the ordeal of the immigrant women. There are some basic frameworks that provide the
basis of the research at hand (Depression 2015). To understand and appropriately fathom their
misery, we must first get a fair idea about what postpartum depression is and how does it affect
the mothers. There are some symptoms which can help to understand whether someone has been
suffering from PPD. These include
 Feeling sad or depressed throughout the day
 Crying for no apparent reason
 An intense feeling of anxiousness
 Disorder in eating
 Sudden mood swings
 Keeping to one’s self and avoiding other people
 Not having an overwhelming attachment to the newborn
 Thoughts of self-harm or upon the baby
 Nurturing doubts about her ability to care for the child
PPD can develop during pregnancy and in some cases does not even fester until after a few
months post childbirth. In extreme cases this can lead to cases of hallucination, paranoia and
thoughts of harming one’s self or her baby can become overpowering (Mertens 2014).
Postpartum depression can be triggered by a lot of factors. Women who already have past
cases of mental health issues or depression face even greater risks of falling into the grasp of this
issue. Hormonal changes in the body that occur during times of pregnancy and after childbirth is

7POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
one of the biggest factors of PPD to set in (Wittkowski, Patel and Fox 2017). If there are any
additional problems that has the individual thinking about it during the childbirth., then chances
are the effects of PPD will be amplified. PPD can be triggered if the social construct is not very
strong and cannot provide the mother with the support and the care that she requires during the
pregnancy period and just after childbirth. In cases where the women are made to leave from
their own country and go seek refuge somewhere else this social pressure is immense and often
not well handled by most. PPD is often been observed to be more powerful when the child has
special needs and/or are specially abled (Wisner et al., 2013). This compounds the burdens of
childcare and often leads to severe cases of depression.
It is very difficult for a woman to handle this own her own, even more so if the woman is
a single parent. Only a health care provider can give her special care and bring her out of the
mental state where she faces only torment with herself, coupled with feelings of guilt,
embarrassment and other self-derogatory thoughts. Symptoms and infestation of this syndrome is
different in every person and this problem has to be dealt with in very unique ways
(Higginbottom et al. 2016). It must be remembered that a health care professional has the
training to properly talk to these women regarding their problems and plan a recovery process
accordingly.
If everyday women face these problems after childbirth and during pregnancy, then it is
only natural to understand why would this effect be even stronger and more serious for those
who are immigrants. The security of one’s own home and country are very assuring and the loss
of this sense of security when she is vulnerable physically and mentally, would lead to a
heightened effect t on the mothers. The amount of research on the effects of PPD on immigrant
women is still inadequate even though the overall concern about this form of depression has

8POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
gained more attention and more and more people are opening about the evils that entail this
problem and trying to provide support and care to those who need it. This paper is taking the
aspect of the trauma that are faced by the immigrant women and the compounded effects of PPD
on them.
Immigrants, both males and females, face unique set of challenges, wherever they live.
These sets of challenges often create such a condition for them that may compromise their
mental health and they are often seen not be given adequate care, both physically and mentally.
For the women, this is even more intense because women are still looked at as being dependent
on the males and a liberal view is still not established in many places of the world. Moreover, if
the women are in their postpartum period in these times, it only increases the chances of PPD.
While some of the countries help the women to overcome their problems as being a part of the
society, there are wide cultural differences across the planet and some cultures only instigate the
mental condition of the women so much that they are more engulfed in the mental depression.
Research design
While the bulk of the work on PPD has not been done while keeping the immigrant
women in the focus, the few that do, are more bent towards trying to find the percentages and
numbers, that show how many women are suffering from this and how big is that number among
the total population. These fractions and numbers often fail to address the humane side of the
problem and hence lacks the intimacy it should have provided to the women suffering from this,
rather than just indicating how many of them are suffering and not do anything about that. This
paper would try to input that aspect into the researches and devise methods that would enable to
best understand the mentality and the views of the immigrant women suffering from PPD.

9POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
The current paper hopes to come up with strategies and methods that would help to
understand the ordeal of the immigrant women suffering from PPD in a better way all the while
taking a more personal and intimate approach while interacting with these women (Ritchie et al.
203). This would give more insights and a better understanding about the problems and the
aspects where the women feel most depressed about or the point which make them hold the most
amount of grievance (Ormston et al. 2014). These personal account and their own reflections
about their own problems will give much more reliable data that would enable to provide better
and more inclusive care to these women.
There can be many different strategies that may be adopted which shall facilitate in this
research. Since this research is more inclined towards doing a qualitative research, the methods
that are going to be prescribed here will be more biased towards trying to take a look at the
problem of PPD on immigrant women in a more theoretical terms, which would be more reliant
on literature and not just numerical analysis. Few of the methods that are going to be adopted
are, photo voice method, diary writing and drawing method.
These methods have been because of the simple reason that the people who are to be
interviewed or questioned are highly vulnerable in terms of mental stability. No conventional
qualitative analysis method can be of help here, and the chosen methods have been seen to be
more intimate and compassionate in previous researches in other fields. Some of these methods
may even be alienating for some of the people and be counter-productive for the purpose of the
research as a whole. On the contrary, the methods that have been chosen for the current research
are more empathizing in terms of compassion and have been used before for researches relating
to feminism studies and have proved themselves more useful than the conventional methods.

10POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
Drawing method: Some researchers have adopted this style to gather information from people
who feel they are mentally vulnerable and yet require themselves to be more expressive while
talking about their problems. The drawing method gives the people who are being interviewed an
advantage in terms of expressing themselves more. The subjects are to be given drawing tools
and would be asked to draw whatever they feel like or how they think they can best visually
express their own perception about their problems. In many cases, drawing method is paired with
writing methods that further enables the subjects to express their feelings and help the research
by clearly defining what they are thinking or what do their paintings mean. This particular
method has been more used in the research with children because they often lack the words or
the vocabulary that help in the research, or cannot properly fathom their own problems, simply
because they cannot yet comprehend the magnitude of the issue. This aspect gives this method an
advantage by making sure that this is a depiction of pure emotions of the women and not
polluted by social dogma.
Photo elicitation: This is a method that uses visual images to help the test subjects to elicit
expressions and comments. This would be helping the women to express themselves through a
medium, making it easier for them to tell exactly how they feel. This method gives space and is
open to interpretation. This particular point would facilitate in the understanding of the unique
problems of the immigrant women suffering from PPD (Taylor Bogdan and DeVault 2015). This
method would give important insights about the problems they face and how they perceive their
problems.
Diary method: Asking the women who are going through PPD is to write their own minds is a
good way to communicate. Many women are not comfortable conversing with people in
interviews and feel more at ease if they are asked to write on paper. Making them keep a diary

11POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION
log would be beneficial in the aspect that it would give data for over a period of time. While
most other methods are done within a short span of time and maybe are even competed in one
day. This method, on the other hand, would be requiring the women to keep a log book and this
would help the research to gather information about how they are feeling in a day-to-day basis.
Valuable information regarding the mood swings can be obtained. Moreover, it can also be
observed what are the triggers for the depression to set in and what circumstances can lead to
PPD to become more intense. Surroundings and circumstantiality can be noticed and the research
may give important results that would help any further research to look into the conditions in
which these women are staying, to try and alter those conditions so that they can be helped to
come out of it.
Arts based research: It is often said that an individual can best express what she or he is feeling
through art. Giving the women complete autonomy or freedom when asking them to use art as a
mode of expressing themselves can be of huge advantage. This method would also be beneficial
in terms of understanding the difference in how every woman feels. How PPD influences every
woman in unique ways would be shed much light upon as every woman would be giving some
different interpretation regarding their problems or the adversities they face every day. This
means that a possible trend might be understood so that probable precautions may be taken to
prevent from these situations to even happening.
Apart from these methods several other methods like body mapping or online research
can also be done. Online research has the advantage of being able to reach people who do not
live nearby by using the internet. This would help the women to talk to the researchers without
being physical present there, and this would also help the women to ne more comfortable to talk
without having to face them in face.