A Serious Postpartum Disorder You Probably Haven’t Heard About

a post by Margarita Tartakovsky for the World of Psychology blog

Within 24 hours of her second daughter’s birth, Dyane Harwood felt elated. From the moment she came home from the hospital, she started writing. Furiously. She wrote while nursing her daughter and going to the bathroom. She wrote on her hands, on the bathroom mirror, inside books and on tabletops. She yearned to write down every thought she was having. She wrote so much that her wrists ached – her carpal tunnel returning – and she was in constant pain.

She also had endless energy and a newfound enthusiasm for life. She felt like she could run a long race. She couldn’t sit still, and her speech was fast and frenetic. She barely slept. Her normally low self-esteem soared. She had no appetite and was losing weight.

Six weeks later Harwood was diagnosed with postpartum bipolar disorder, which she chronicles in her powerful, information-packed memoir Birth of a New Brain: Healing from Postpartum Bipolar Disorder. (Today, she’d be diagnosed with bipolar disorder, “peripartum onset,” per the DSM-5). Her compulsive urge to write is actually a condition called hypergraphia, which is associated with bipolar disorder.

When we think of postpartum conditions, we think of depression and anxiety. Rarely does bipolar disorder come to mind, and yet according to Postpartum Support International, “Many women are diagnosed for the first time with bipolar depression or mania during pregnancy or postpartum.” According to perinatal psychiatrist and researcher Dr. Verinder Sharma, “We know childbirth is perhaps the most important and most potent trigger of bipolar disorder.”

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