Should all women with postpartum depression be screened for bipolar disorder?

The term postpartum depression is used generically to denote occurrence of a depressive episode after childbirth. Emerging research suggests that bipolar disorder is common among women with postpartum depression. Due to the lack of awareness of its existence, bipolar postpartum depression is often misdiagnosed as major depressive disorder, causing long delays for women to receive appropriate treatment. We hypothesize that screening all women with postpartum depression for bipolar disorder would help correctly identify subgroups of women based on the underlying psychiatric diagnosis. This suggested approach could improve the outcome of postpartum depression and facilitate timely disorder-specific treatment interventions.