With all the stress, social, and family pressures a woman faces after having a baby, it is natural for her to feel run down and out of sorts. Added to this is a normal desire to care for the infant as is the anxiety, common to any new parents, that the slightest mistake in childcare could mean major complications for the baby.

How, then, is a person to tell if these feelings of anxiety go beyond what is normal and move into the area of the psychological condition known as postpartum depression, or PPD? Unfortunately, statistics vary as to how often PPD occurs. Generally speaking, experts estimate that from 10 percent to 15 percent of women experience a serious form of PPD, conditions more serious than the common "baby blues." However, other experts place that percentage at as high as 30 percent.

Warning Signs

The biggest complicating factor is that most women (at many as 80 percent) suffer some form of minor depression either during or after pregnancy. The trick then is to weed through the forest of conflicting feelings and emotions to determine if the condition is serious enough to require treatment. In this regard, women have a myriad of resources available, both at local care agencies and online.

The warning signs of PPD are much the same as for any form of depression. For instance, sufferers often have trouble sleeping or are exhausted all the time. Worry and anxiety also are common symptoms. This worry goes beyond what might be considered normal and can be manifested as negative thoughts about herself or the baby. The mother might also cry over small problems, lose interest in activities she normally enjoys, or not feel like eating.

Diagnosis Tools

With all these factors working against a new mother, it might seem more normal to assume that some form of PPD is present rather than not. However, there are several diagnostic tools that can be used to evaluate the level and severity of the emotional discomfort. Some of these tools can be used by health care professionals, but others can be used for self-analysis.

One of these tools is the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), a tool used for outpatient or home visit screening. The scale consists of 10 questions, each with four possible answers that can be completed within five minutes. These answers are ranked on a scale of 0-3, with higher scores indicating a more serious condition.

The other readily available tool is the Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS). It consists of 20 questions with four possible answers about a woman's emotional state, ranging from "a little of the time" to "most of the time."

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