By Dave Dahl

CHAMPAIGN – Pregnancy brings lots of changes to the body, and the impact on one’s mental health can’t be minimized.

University of Illinois research determined pregnant women are almost twice as likely to consider suicide as other women. Karen Tabb, an associate professor of social work, has published her team’s research in the Journal of Affective Disorders.

This is, Tabb said, a component of the nation’s rising maternal mortality problem.

“The number of women who are dying during pregnancy in the post-partum period is on the rise in the United States,” Tabb told WJBC News. “We found that nearly five percent of the women whom we sampled reported thoughts of death or thoughts of harm. That is nearly double what suicidal ideation is in the general population.”

What about the husband and children you will leave behind? Tabb says the person contemplating suicide has already thought of that.

“They described having to take their entire families with them.”

Tabb says two points stick out: there is a need for mental health screening of pregnant women; and the follow-up question to suicide ideation must be, do you have a plan?

The study was of 736 pregnant women seeking WIC benefits or signing up for a perinatal depression registry in the Champaign area.

Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected].