When Motherhood and Mental Health Collide
Postpartum psychosis affects one to two women out of every thousand births. It can arrive suddenly—within days of delivery—and present with hallucinations, delusions, mania, or suicidal thoughts. Despite the severity, it's one of the most overlooked and stigmatized perinatal mental health conditions. In this powerful and eye-opening episode of Road to Resilience, Mount Sinai psychiatrist Dr. Veerle Bergink, and computational geneticist Dr. Behrang Mahjani, unpack the science, warning signs, and pathways to healing for this psychiatric emergency.
Stephen Calabria: [00:00:00] From the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, this is Road to Resilience, a podcast about facing adversity. I'm your host, Stephen Calabria, Mount Sinai's, director of Podcasting.
Today on Road to Resilience, we're exploring one of the most serious and least understood conditions that can follow childbirth: postpartum psychosis. It's a rare but severe psychiatric emergency that affects approximately one to two women out of every thousand births.
When it strikes, it can come on quickly, sometimes within days of delivery, and may include hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and even thoughts of harming oneself or one's baby. Despite its seriousness, postpartum psychosis remains underdiagnosed, undertreated, and underdiscussed.
To help us better understand this condition and the paths to healing and resilience, we're joined by two leading experts. Dr. Veerle Bergink is director of the Women's Mental Health Program at Mount Sinai, and a renowned psychiatrist whose research focuses on perinatal mental illness.
[00:01:00] Dr. Bahrang Mahjani computational geneticist and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who uses large scale data to uncover the biological and environmental risk factors that shape postpartum psychiatric conditions.
Together they'll unpack what we know and what we don't about postpartum psychosis, how to recognize the warning signs, what recovery can look like, and what gives them hope for the future. We're honored to welcome Doctors Veerle Bergink and Bahrang Mahjani to the show.
Dr. Veerle Bergink and Bahrang Mahjani , welcome to Road to Resilience.
Veerle Bergink: Happy to be here.
Stephen Calabria: Now, how did each of you come to focus on postpartum psychosis in your research and clinical work? Was there a moment or story that kind of catalyzed your interest?
Veerle Bergink: As a psychiatrist, I saw many women with postpartum psychosis because I was working at the referral center for postpartum psychosis.