Beauty and the beast: A psychoanalytically oriented qualitative study detailing mothers' experience of perinatal obsessive-compulsive disorder

Abstract

Our understanding of mothers' experience of perinatal obsessive-compulsive disorder (POCD) is limited. While symptoms of POCD have been documented in the literature, the wider lived experience of people with this condition has received less attention. This study used a psychoanalytically informed research method to explore mothers' experiences of POCD. Five participants each engaged in three unstructured interviews, where participants were given time and space to discuss their personal experience. Three major themes emerged from the interviews conducted: a difficult road to motherhood, which related to the challenges participants faced becoming mothers; protector/aggressor, which described the tension between participants' intrusive thoughts and their desire to protect their baby; and mothers' loss, which described participants' sense of sadness having experienced POCD at this special time in their lives. These themes are discussed in relation to their significance for our thinking about mothers' experience of POCD during pregnancy, postnatally and beyond.