Oxytocin and Postpartum Depression

    This review of randomized controlled trials discusses whether oxytocin can be considered to be a viable treatment for postpartum depression. Postpartum depression (PPD) is a form of depression women experience after delivering their baby. It causes anxiety, disappointment, and melancholy in new mothers, though the impacts do run the risks of being more severe. 15% of new mothers globally experience PPD, though the mechanism by which it occurs is not fully understood as there are many factors that can contribute to its development. High risk factors for PPD include familial inheritance, inflammation, hormone-level changes, and neurotransmitter levels or activity changes. This condition hinders the ability of new mothers to care for their babies, as well as negatively impacting the relationship between the mother and the baby and the mother and the rest of the family/spouse. Oxytocin, a hormone necessary for maternal functions like labor and lactation, has been identified as a viable therapy option for PPD. There is also growing evidence that oxytocin is associated with PPD, though its use to treat PPD is considered controversial. 

Early use of oxytocin may work to prevent the occurrence of PPD, however the treatment of PPD with oxytocin is still understudied, and further research would be required to definitively determine whether oxytocin is a more effective treatment for PPD than other treatments such as antidepressants and psychotherapy. As it stands, pursuing a treatment for PPD involving oxytocin is likely to be worth pursuing due to the links between oxytocin and childbirth, though it will likely need to be combined with factors that can address the complexity of PPD. Further study into the mechanism of PPD would likely further clarify methods of treatment. Women’s health care tends to be less studied than men, which may partially explain why there hasn’t been as much research into this mechanism. The review discusses that, to reach a definitive conclusion, this relationship must be more broadly studied and with larger sample sizes. It is necessary to prioritize the study of women’s health to fill in the knowledge gaps produced by the chronic neglect of the study of women.