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The majority of persons view postpartum depression as a problem that affects just the mother. This, however, is not the case. The whole family experiences relationship issues that affect family dynamics drastically. Depressed moms who do not seek treatment often put their infants in danger of experiencing severe or deadly setbacks in growth and development.

The psychiatric name for this complicated problem is nonorganic failure to thrive. Nonorganic means that no physical cause for the baby's delays exists. As a result of the mother's postpartum depression, she often fails to care for the infant's physical and emotional requirements. Even though the baby may cry out for food at the beginning, he or she often loses interest and quits interacting with other people. This disorder can cause nutritional problems, starvation, or even death.

Doctors use growth charts to track a baby's physical growth in height, weight, and head size. If a baby is healthy at birth, his or her size fits within the normal values on these charts. If the baby begins to have severe growth delays, this will appear when comparing his or her progress against normal growth charts. If the baby's growth is below the fifth percentile, doctors become worried.

Other symptoms may become evident before the baby's growth delays reach this critical point. Most infants who develop at a normal rate are curious about their surroundings. In contrast, infants who do not thrive have little or no curiosity about their environment. These infants rarely make noise or words; they have stopped trying to relate with their caregivers.

How much of a problem is failure to thrive? If untreated, the baby can starve, and even die. Although the infant may get just enough nutrition to stay alive, his or her muscles, bone, and mind cannot develop enough. Furthermore, even if they are treated, these children never "catch up" completely. They often acquire relationship problems or eating disorders, even when they finally start getting their needs met.

Infants diagnosed with failure to thrive often become critically ill from malnutrition. They are often in the hospital for several weeks at a time. Sometimes, they become so weakened that taking a bottle is exhausting. They get feedings through a tube placed in the stomach, or even in their veins to get nutrition!

The most tragic component of failure to thrive is that it is so preventable. If moms who have postpartum depression identify their problem at its onset, they can get help and never expose their fragile babies to these horrific dangers. In fact, studies have demonstrated that nine-tenths of those mothers who suffer from depression who seek treatment will experience significant improvement!

A number of approaches are useful in treating postpartum depression. Some doctors prescribe medicines like antidepressants. These medicines are expensive. They should also be avoided in nursing mothers. Moreover, these drugs can cause thoughts of suicide; these medicines must be prescribed with great care.

Usually, doctors recommend counseling rather than or in addition to medicines. Counseling, however, is costly. Additionally, it often requires a lot of extra time, and several weeks may pass before this treatment begins to help. Unfortunately, if the woman's depression is severe, this much time may be too much to prevent harm to the infant. If the baby starts showing delayed growth, additional treatment may be required.

Luckily, other non-drug treatment options can be used. Two revolutionary, effective approaches that typically yield results much faster than counseling, and are not nearly as dangerous as drugs, are Neuro-Linguistic Programming, or NLP and hypnosis for depression. These two approaches usually start to help after even a single treatment. In addition, they cost much less than alternative approaches.

Moms who think they might have postpartum depression need to seek treatment at once so that their infants do not develop dangerous growth problems. The seriousness of the effects on the baby demands that the treatment work quickly, and have a high rate of effectiveness. NLP and hypnosis for depression are inexpensive, begin to work almost immediately, and are extremely effective. Therefore, both of these treatments are perfect for treating postpartum depression.

Summary: Postpartum depression is depression that occurs after the birth of a child. These new mothers are not able to provide their infants the caring they must have to live and grow. This results in failure to thrive, a severe, possibly fatal disorder, affecting the baby. Moms who think they have postpartum depression need to get treatment immediately. Hypnosis and NLP for depression are inexpensive and are extremely effective.

Alan B. Densky, CH specializes in depression and stress related symptoms as a certified hypnotherapist and NLP Practitioner. During his 31-year career he's helped thousands of clients. He offers hypnosis therapy for depression CDs. Visit his Neuro-VISION NLP website for the hypnosis article repository, or watch his free video hypnosis collection.