• Posted February 18, 2026

Pain Drives Postpartum Depression, Review Finds

Pain during pregnancy and after delivery can significantly increase a woman’s risk of postpartum depression, a new evidence review has concluded.

Further, there are specific pain-related risk factors that influence the odds of postpartum depression among women in racial and ethnic minorities, researchers reported in the journal Current Psychiatry Reports.

“There are multiple interrelated factors that contribute to pain, particularly childbirth-related pain,” researcher Sudhamshi Beeram, a graduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Campaign, said in a news release.

“When it is severe, poorly managed or occurring in the context of discrimination or prenatal mental health vulnerability, it further contributes to postpartum depression and ongoing pain-related problems,” she said.

About 10% to 20% of women in the U.S. experience postpartum depression, and the highest rates are among women in racial and ethnic minorities, researchers said in background notes.

To see how pain might influence depression risk, researchers analyzed data from 23 U.S.-based research studies conducted during the past five years. All the studies explored risk factors for postpartum depression.

From these previous studies, researchers crafted a list of factors that can increase women’s risk of pain and postpartum depression. They are:

• Mental health during pregnancy (such as depression and anxiety)

• Delivery method (especially Cesarean)

• Pain management practices

• Discrimination toward racial and ethnic minorities

• Overall neglect of pain

Pain following a C-section is a particularly powerful driver of postpartum depression, but researchers found doctors tend to limit their management of this surgical pain.

Although 95% of doctors agreed that women need pain management following a C-section, they most often prescribed not opioids but instead ibuprofen, ice packs and acetaminophen.

Poor communication between patients and providers often hindered pain management, increasing the risk of postpartum depression, researchers found.

Black and Latina women regularly reported that doctors overlooked, dismissed or ignored their pain-related concerns and preferences, the study said.

It also found that patients sometimes withheld or limited info they shared with their providers that might help manage their pain, such as a history of opioid use disorder or cultural beliefs about pain management.

“Clinicians have to rely on a number of indicators — what their patients report, what they observe, what they’re measuring and what their clinical experience suggests,” said lead researcher Sandraluz Lara-Cinisomo, a professor of health and kinesiology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“The literature showed that they are relying on these various factors to help inform how they are going to treat pain intrapartum during the delivery and then postpartum,” she said in a news release. “We also found that patients had specific needs that went unmet, such as cultural needs and a safe space to report any kind of pain that they might have experienced.”

Results also indicated that nurses are the first line of defense against pain, but do not always feel equipped to treat it.

“It raised this issue of who is treating the pain, and do they have the skills and resources they need?” Lara-Cinisomo said. “But then are the patients also able to disclose what they are feeling and share their concerns about specific pain protocols or the levels of pain they might be experiencing?”

She said busy health care providers have a limited time to address all of the patient’s needs.

"But this paper shows us that there are questions that might be asked in those five minutes when a provider is seeing a patient, following up or setting a protocol,” Lara-Cinisomo added.

More information

The American Psychological Association has more on postpartum depression.

SOURCE: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, news release, Feb. 16, 2026