Perinatal Mood Disorders Like Britney Spears’s Are Extremely Common. Why Don’t More People Talk About Them?

Spears went on to write that “you did not want to hear from me those whole two years” that she was pregnant with her two sons, adding that she did “not want to be around almost anyone at all.”

“I was hateful,” she writes. “I didn’t want anyone, not even my mom, to come near me.”

Like so many of the women I treat within the confines of my therapy office, Spears was withdrawing from friends and family during her pregnancies, another common sign of depression and anxiety. Yet Spears chalks her behavior up to being a “real mama bear.” In the book she recalls: “When I was pregnant, I wanted everyone to stay away: Stand back! There’s a baby here!” Feeling innately protective of a pregnancy is understandable, but it is not uncommon for those feelings to become so intense that a pregnant person self-isolates—and to the detriment of their overall mental health.

And like so many, without any support during pregnancy, Spears’s mental health continued to deteriorate after the birth of her sons. In the book, she says she “began to suspect that I was a bit overprotective when I wouldn’t let my mom hold Jayden for the first two months,” adding that she “shouldn’t have been that controlling.” Spears describes moments caught by the paparazzi that made her feel like an inadequate mother—moving her vehicle with her son on her lap, for instance, or tripping with her son in her arms, resulting in paparazzi photos that made it look as if she was going to drop him.

These moments—feelings of inadequacy as a new mother; of severe anxiety to the point that no one else could hold her child—are all common signs of postpartum depression that, again, so often go overlooked. For Spears, this time preceded the highly publicized events of 2007, when her children were taken from her and the world saw what is now known as the infamous “head-shaving incident.”

“With my head shaved, everyone was scared of me, even my mom,” Spears writes. “Flailing those weeks without my children, I lost it, over and over again. I didn’t even really know how to take care of myself.”

Like many mothers, Spears endured the devastating effects of perinatal depression and anxiety that goes untreated, including loss of custody and suicidal ideation. Data shows that suicide is one of the leading causes of maternal death, accounting for an estimated 20% of all postpartum deaths.