Katherine Stone over at Postpartum Progress writes an interesting post in response to the Vanity Fair article by Todd Purdum suggesting that former Vice President candidate Govern Sarah Palin was experiencing postpartum depression during the Presidential campaign. She is right to question the pundits and politicians that are so quick to throw out postpartum depression as the reason behind aberrant behavior.

To get to her post, click here. I’ve excerpted a few paragraphs below:

Purdum, as per usual when it comes to the media, shows very little understanding of postpartum depression. PPD is not a joke. It is NOT about being able to get along with others, even though of course anger and irritability can come into play. It’s NOT about being an independent woman, or being disagreeable, or being emotional.

Women with postpartum depression are so affected by their illness that it impacts their ability to function on a daily basis. If Gov. Palin had been having difficulty sleeping and eating, wondering why she had ever become a mother, withdrawing from family and friends, crying nonstop, feeling absolutely miserable and disconnected from herself, wondering how on earth she could get through the next five minutes and even possibly considering suicide, then perhaps she did indeed have postpartum depression. I have seen NO evidence of that. Indeed, it would surprise me that any new mother in the serious throes of postpartum depression would be able to fly all over the country gladhanding and making public speeches and smiling so damn much all day long.

Even more interesting to me is that Purdum shows no concern for Palin, should she in fact have been suffering from postpartum depression, and it doesn’t seem anyone else quoted in the article was concerned for her health and safety either. Does he understand how serious postpartum depression is?

I might actually have been able to shrug this article off to media ignorance about perinatal mood and anxiety disorders, were it not for continued references throughout the article to mental illness. Purdum uses words, either his own or those of whom he chose to quote for this article, to describe Gov. Palin like “erratic” and “whack job.”

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