What is Postpartum Rage?
- Jamie Sorenson
- Mar 17
- 3 min read
What is Postpartum Rage? That is a great question. WHAT THE HECK IS IT?
Are there any NIH funded studies evaluating postpartum rage? NONE. ZERO. ZIP. NADA. NOTHING. NONEXISTENT. There is one article titled "Seeing Red: A Grounded Theory Study of Women’s Anger after Childbirth," but this is not a research study. This study was funded by a UBC School of Nursing Sheena Davidson Internal Research Grant and a UBC 4-Year Fellowship, not the NIH.
Hmmm... that alone should bring on rage... Postpartum rage is well described in the general population, but not in research. There are many articles on managing postpartum rage by Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, Office of Women's Health, Center of Perinatal Excellence, Healthline, Psych Central, Baby Central, Psych Today, What to Expect, Gidget, and The Bump. The #postpartumrage has 11.5K posts on Instagram, 5.2K posts of Facebook, and 6.3K posts on TikTok. There's 10 pages of hits for "postpartum rage" on Google. So why do we not know more about postpartum rage?
I used to think that postpartum rage was a symptom of postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum ocd, and postpartum psychosis and that's why there was no research on it. I do believe that postpartum rage CAN be symptom of these other diagnoses, but what if the postpartum woman has no other diagnosis? Not meeting criteria for depression, anxiety, OCD or psychosis. It could be that she is suppressing the underlying diagnosis and minimizing reports of symptoms, but I am coming to appreciate that perhaps we need to consider postpartum rage it's own diagnosis.
What evidence do I have to support this? Well, clinically I have had patients without a postpartum diagnosis go into intermittent rages. Also, the internet shows videos of mother's popping off into a blind rage. It's scary. It's not pretty. It's a little ugly, but we owe it to women to explore postpartum rage more thoroughly. The brain literally is grossly restructured during pregnancy and postpartum, all of our executive function is impacted dramatically postpartum. You cannot convince me that these rage episodes do not have a biological basis.
The article above about Seeing Red, proposes that failure to meet women's expectations and lack of social support is the cause of postpartum rage. They even have a cute figure and explanation:
I do not intend to demean these researchers. I am grateful for their efforts, but a theoretical construct of postpartum rage is simply insufficient. At the same time, I also believe their construct is valid.
Women experience anger. Society tries to push it down and thus we are expected to swallow the lump in our throat and move on, but that's not how the human body works. Anger is a core emotion that all humans experience. Women are allowed to be angry. Women deserve more space in society for our anger and I'm honestly angry about the lack of data on this.
I do believe that postpartum rage is separate from anger. I believe it is a biological process caused by changes in our brains during pregnancy and postpartum. I also believe that some women experience episodes of postpartum rage outside of mood, anxiety and psychotic disorders. I do wonder if postpartum rages are exacerbations of ADHD executive dysfunction, but there is no evidence to support it. I suspect that Postpartum Rage can occur independent of any psychiatric diagnosis. Most importantly, I believe postpartum rage is real and potentially dangerous for mothers, infants, and their partners. I also believe that if we study postpartum rage, I will have more evidence to approach treating the problem.
So in the midst of this current administration's assault on women's health, I urge you and all of us to reflect on what it means to be an angry woman and do we not deserve the care for postpartum rage that we are expected to bestow upon others on a daily basis?
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