Postpartum Depression and Postpartum Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder are psychiatric conditions that can result in severe problems such as child neglect, and in extreme cases may even provoke suicide or neonatal murder. About 10-15% of pregnant women will develop these disorders after delivery. In addition to mothers’ symptoms, problems in attachment with the new baby are highly related to these disorders.

We developed a battery of sensitive cognitive tasks to examine whether cognitive biases during pregnancy can predict future development of postpartum depression and PTSD.

Preliminary findings based on a sample of 37 pregnant women show that future development of postpartum depression can be predicted by biases shown during the third trimester of the pregnancy. Specifically, women who tend to develop symptoms of postpartum depression already show attention bias toward pictures of babies and exacerbated arousal toward angry pictures and more sadness in the presence of neutral baby faces. For more information click here.

By examining different cognitive biases and emotional measures, we were able to identify cognitive biases that serve as behavioral markers for future development of postpartum depression and PTSD. This knowledge may shed light on the mechanisms underlying adaptive vs. maladaptive biased processing patterns during pregnancy and ultimately lead to the development of individually tailored preventive treatment.