by Sharon Elizabeth

Created on: January 08, 2009

Moms mingle on comfortable chairs talking together at Parenting Oasis, a Minneapolis drop-in center for parents and young children. Some have babies strapped to them like kangaroos or come with slightly older children who quickly run over to play in the generous toy corner. Maureen Campion, founder of Parenting Oasis and a therapist specializing in working with parents and kids, relaxes on a couch as we talk over coffee.

"I became interested in Postpartum Depression and its affect on kids when I found myself isolated as an older mom in the suburbs and I didn't know any other families with young kids in my neighborhood" recounts Campion. "So, I opened up Parenting Oasis to build community and that is how I explain it to parents. If I called Parenting Oasis a center for moms with postpartum depression, I would be sitting here in an empty space."

That said Campion believes that most women who come to her for therapy suffering from Postpartum Depression don't know that they have it. "People believe that PPD is what Andrea Yates experienced when she killed her children which in turn increases the stigma of this disease", Jill Simon adds. Ms. Simon, a therapist and faculty member of The U of Minnesota's Center for Early Education and Development works with at-risk families and kids. And, as a mom who has experienced Postpartum Depression, Simon has a personal and professional passion for the subject. Simon describes PPD as a continuum ranging from mild to very severe symptoms often masked by the normal feelings and fatigue of parenting young children.

Celebrity books on PPD have helped to shine the light on this issue, but it is still one of the more under-treated mental illnesses. This has serious implications for the children of the approximately 20% mothers who will experience PPD. Much research has been done on the affect of a mother's depression on her children, but surprising little information is available for the layperson.

Attachment Theory

Theories of attachment have been the assumption from which many researchers have structured their work on maternal depression's affect on child development. Attachment theory examines how a child forms a bond to his or her primary caregiver from a research and therapeutic perspective. Researchers have broken down this natural and miraculous process by which parents and their babies bond. Bonding is an amazingly reciprocal dance where the parent's job is to learn her baby's cues and respond to them. In addition, the caregiver's

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