Perth clinicians are urging doctors to consider “organic causes” of postnatal depression after a woman’s medication-resistant depression was found to be caused by a frontal meningioma. 

Aged in her 30s, the patient was referred to a mother and baby unit at a tertiary hospital 10 months after the birth of her first child, who had become severely malnourished. 

She had developed depression soon after her vaginal delivery following an uncomplicated pregnancy.

Her illness was characterised by low mood and lack of motivation, reported the doctors from the city’s King Edward Memorial Hospital for Women.