Posts by Sharon Dekel, PhD, MPhil, MS
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Establishing Postpartum PTSD After Traumatic Childbirth
A Massachusetts General Hospital psychiatrist is working to establish formal recognition of childbirth-related posttraumatic stress disorder (CB-PTSD). Her work aims to inform healthcare providers that postpartum PTSD differs from postpartum depression.
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Traumatic Childbirth During COVID-19 Can Trigger Psychological Growth
Mrithula S. Babu, Sharon Dekel, PhD, and colleagues linked childbirth-related acute stress to post-traumatic growth (PTG) in women who gave birth during COVID-19 but not those who gave birth before the pandemic. Similarly, PTG was associated with better positive postpartum adjustment only in the COVID-19 group.
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Traumatic Childbirth, Postpartum Depression More Common in Black/Latinx Women Than White Women During COVID-19
Sharon Dekel, PhD, and colleagues surveyed U.S. women negative for COVID-19 who gave birth during the pandemic, finding traumatic childbirth was 2.7 times more common among 236 Black or Latinx women than 236 white women and postpartum depression was 81% more common.
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Childbirth Often Traumatic for Women with COVID-19
Massachusetts General Hospital researchers found that 49% of women with COVID-19 endorsed an acute traumatic stress response to childbirth, and compared to women without COVID-19, they reported higher levels of pain during delivery and double the odds of delivering an infant who required neonatal ICU admission.
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Healthy Women Had Negative Childbirth Experiences at the Outbreak of COVID-19
Women not infected with SARS-CoV-2 who gave birth early in the COVID-19 pandemic were significantly more likely than matched controls to have a clinically significant acute stress response, Massachusetts General Hospital physicians have determined, and to have problems with maternal bonding and breastfeeding.
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Depression Screening Needed Repeatedly in Peripartum Period to Detect Delayed Onset and Fluctuating Symptoms
Symptoms of peripartum depression often resolve. However, they may also have a delayed onset according to a novel new study of this issue, which extended from early pregnancy to the early postpartum period.
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Q&A with Dr. Sharon Dekel: Understanding Postpartum PTSD
Childbirth is commonly thought to be a happy event with happy outcomes, but research shows that most women report some degree of "postpartum blues." PTSD researcher Sharon Dekel, PhD, seeks to better understand the postpartum mental health challenges faced by mothers and why some women struggle while others thrive.
Biography
Dr. Sharon Dekel is an assistant professor of psychology in the Psychiatry Department at Harvard Medical School and Mass General. Her research focuses on biological and psychological factors associated with ways of coping with stressful events. Her work on the positive outlook of traumatic stress is considered pioneering in the field.
Since joining Mass General in 2013, Dr. Dekel has expanded her research as well as the fields of trauma studies and maternal postpartum wellness in her investigation of childbirth as a potentially traumatic event. She developed an original multidisciplinary research model involving both the Department of Psychiatry and the Department of OB/GYN which has allowed her lab to study over 1,300 postpartum women. The study employs biological and psychological methods to detect the mechanisms underlying maternal growth and psychopathology in the aftermath of childbirth. Dr. Dekel is taking the lead in defining the overlooked condition of childbirth-related post-traumatic stress disorder. Her program is aimed at developing novel tools for early detection of mothers at risk for postpartum mental illness and preventive treatments that are effective and safe.
Dr. Dekel has an extensive record of publication in leading scientific journals. She is a two-time recipient of the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation’s Young Investigator Award, Mass General’s Claflin Distinguished Scholar Award for Women in Science, and a recent recipient of the Susan A. Hickman Memorial Research Award for impactful research on postpartum mental health. Her research is funded by the NIH.
Dr. Dekel is also a licensed clinical psychology and has a private practice.
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