A Massachusetts murder trial that ended in a mistrial this week has put new attention on postpartum psychosis, a rare but serious psychiatric emergency that can affect new mothers within weeks of giving birth, and one that mental health experts say is still poorly understood even by doctors who are supposed to screen for it.…
For many new mothers, the earliest weeks of parenthood bring something no one in the delivery room ever mentions: sudden, disturbing mental images involving their baby being harmed. Sometimes those images involve the mother herself.
The thoughts are so unsettling, so completely at odds with the fierce love a mother feels, that most women carry…

