Depression rates among pregnant women, new moms doubled during lockdown

(Nathan Jeffay/ The Times of Israel) — Two out of five Israeli women giving birth in the thick of the coronavirus pandemic experienced prenatal or postnatal depression, double the pre-COVID rates, according to a new study.

Researchers from Ben-Gurion University studied 730 Israeli women who gave birth between July 2020 and February 2021, a time that included the nation’s third lockdown, and found that 40 percent reported forms of depression ahead of giving birth and/or in the first year of the baby’s life.

The study adds to a growing body of literature on damage the pandemic has wreaked on peoples’ mental health, especially women, children and the most vulnerable. (…)