The tip of the iceberg: postpartum suicidality in Israel

Abstract

Suicides Data on completed suicides of women aged 18–44 were taken from the national database of causes of death, maintained by the CBS, based on death certificates. Since 1998, the CBS has coded the underlying cause of death according to the International Classification of Diseases Version 10 [ICD-10]. [66] found that there was a nearly four times likelihood of maternal deaths from external causes in the 9 to 12 months postnatally, compared to the first three months. [...]reporting only early postpartum data would have a direct impact on maternal suicide rates reported, and may contribute to the low prevalence found by Fuhr et al. as noted above [48]. [...]psychiatric history is clearly a risk factor that should be assessed in contacts with postpartum women. While this may seem intuitive, it is also recommended that advantage be taken of the large databases which have been created by the Ministry of Health and the HMO’s to document and analyze the association between the use of screening and intervention program and actual rates of PPD, suicidal ideation, attempts or completed suicides in Israel. Since depression during pregnancy has been found to be a significant predictor of subsequent PPD [74–76], early intervention is recommended prior to delivery, which could contribute to prevention of both PPD and postpartum suicidality in all its expressions, as supported by the research of Yazici et al.