Post-traumatic stress disorder may follow childbirth

Post-traumatic stress disorder is an under-recognised complication of difficult childbirth and can be caused by insensitive obstetric care, according to a consultant psychiatrist.

Dr Fiona Blake from the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford told a multidisciplinary conference on childbirth held at the Royal Society of Medicine last week that women who have had a difficult birth experience can fall prey to a syndrome similar to that …