Clinical Study Of The Therapy Of Invigorating Heart And Spleen To Treat Ostpartum Depression

Postpartum depression is one kind of postpartum mood disorders begins inthe first 6 weeks postpartum (the patient has no history of psychologicaldisorder), its main syndromes include: feeling hopeless, sad and overwhelmed;crying a lot; feeling restless or irritable; in severe case the patient mayhave syndromes like delusions, hallucinations or even commit suicide. It isone of the most common complications after delivery, which not only harmshealth of the puerperal woman and the baby, but also has negative effect onthe family and the society.Modern medical studies look at postpartum depression from biologicaland psychological aspects, so the treatments normally include medication,psychotherapy and physical therapy. But present antidepressant medicine hasthe problems of serious side-effects, long time to take effect, high priceand effects upon breast-breeding, hence hard to be accepted by patients andtheir relatives. So far traditional Chinese herbal medicine has certaineffects on postpartum depression and at the same time it has the advantagesof less severe side effects and no effects upon breastfeeding, so easy to beaccepted.The subject of this research is Heart-spleen Deficiency Type Mild toModerate Postpartum depression. The research adopted random control studymethod to test the effectiveness of combined treatment of Guipi Tang andPsychological Therapy so as to provide theoretical basis of Therapy ofInvigorating Heart and Spleen in treating postpartum depression.Methods: 60 patients from Yue Xiu Obstetric and Gynecology Hospital wereobserved. They were randomly divided into two groups: observe group and controlgroup. Observe group were treated by support psychological treatment andtraditional Chinese medicine—Guipi Tang. Patients in Control group patientswere treated only by support psychological treatment. The treatment lastedfor 4 weeks. Assessments were conducted before and every week during treatmentwith HAMD, the effective rate was indicated by reductive rate. and at the sametime estrogen and progesterone levels were also measured.Results: The rates of effectiveness of observe group and control groupwere 93.3% and 85% respectively. HAMD of both groups decreased, the observegroup showed improvement after the first week's treatment (P＜0.05 while thecontrol showed improvement after the second week's treatment (P＜0.05, in the third week, the observe group showed better result than the control groupP＜0.05. the level of estrogen after treatment rose in both group, observegroup was more significant P＜0.05, while Progesterone level decreased in bothgroup as well, observe group decreased more than control group P＜0.05.Conclusion: The Therapy of Invigorating Heart and Spleen is effectivein treatment of mild to moderate postpartum Depression.