When Andrea Campanari didn’t return from a walk Friday morning, her husband grew worried. Although she had left their Evanston apartment at 9 a.m., just a half-hour earlier, Juan Ordonez called police, saying his wife had given birth to a baby a week before and was depressed, according to a release by the Evanston Police Department.
The 33-year-old woman’s body was discovered just before 1 p.m. Friday, locked in a bathroom in a Chicago bagel shop. She had slit her wrists and stabbed herself in the chest, said Chicago Police Lt. Joseph Giorango.
Campanari and Ordonez, a business student at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, are from Argentina, said school spokesman Richard Honack.
Fliers distributed Friday by Evanston police before Campanari was found stated that the woman “possibly suffers from postpartum depression.”
The illness afflicts as many as 20 percent of women who give birth, said Diana Lynn Barnes, a psychotherapist and president of Postpartum Support International, a non-profit awareness group. Barnes noted that pregnant women routinely are screened for illnesses such as gestational diabetes, which affects only 1 to 3 percent of women.
“A woman’s body goes through enormous hormonal and physiological changes during pregnancy,” Barnes said.
Those chemical factors, along with psychological stresses and other risk factors, such as a family history of depression or thyroid illness, can lead to postpartum depression, she said.
“It can happen immediately or any time up to a year postpartum,” said Shoshana Bennet, a clinical psychologist and president-elect of Postpartum Support International.
Symptoms of postpartum depression include changes in sleeping and eating patterns, high anxiety, difficulty bonding with the baby, feelings of hopelessness and dread, frequent crying, forgetfulness and guilty feelings, Bennet said.
Friends and relatives who observe these symptoms should intervene immediately and get help, Bennet said.
