New mothers with epilepsy are 10 times more likely to be readmitted to hospital for a psychiatric illness within a month of giving birth than those without epilepsy, a study shows.

Despite both epilepsy and recent childbirth each being associated with increased mental health vulnerability, the literature on postpartum psychiatric illness in women with epilepsy was sparse, the US researchers said.

Drawing on a nationwide hospital readmissions database, the team from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, identified one million postpartum women (mean age 28), of whom 6745 had epilepsy.

After comparing reasons for readmission, they found 13 out of every 10,000 women with epilepsy who gave birth were readmitted within 30 days with a psychiatric illness compared with one in every 10,000 women without epilepsy.