There is a recent [August, 2026] analysis in The New York Times, What to Know About Postpartum Psychosis, stating that, “Postpartum psychosis is characterized by hallucinations and delusions that cause women to disconnect from reality. The symptoms can vary: Some women might be high-energy, talking faster than usual or staying awake for days. Others might feel depressed and disconnected from their baby.”
“Symptoms often come and go. A woman might see or hear something that isn’t there, only to appear completely normal a few minutes later.”
“Postpartum psychosis is believed to be triggered by a combination of the hormonal and immunological changes that accompany childbirth, as well as genetics and environmental factors like sleep deprivation.”
“One of the first goals of treatment in any type of specialized facility is to help new mothers catch up on sleep, as doctors believe that sleep deprivation can trigger psychosis. Most women also receive medication, often a combination of benzodiazepines, antipsychotics and lithium. Research has shown that electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, can effectively treat severe cases.”
If the therapies to manage postpartum psychosis target for chemical signals and for electrical signals, it is possible to explore a conceptual explanation based on electrical and chemical signals.
Simply put, postulating what postpartum psychosis is, using components in the cranium and their mechanisms would move knowledge forward against the current experiential unknowns.
What is going on in the mind during episodes of postpartum psychosis? In what directions are relays proceeding and how? What destinations in the mind are having increased frequency and duration?
Showing several combinations of predictive possibilities in what can be called conceptual neuroimaging could shape how to place care as well as stay safe against precipitous outcomes.
Already, there is a lot of difficulty in explaining what it even means to experience postpartum psychosis to individuals and their loved ones, because the term is a label then descriptions are used. There is no theoretical breakdown, using the components of mind to have a display, or to share targets for therapy, like where relays must recede or what destinations to avoid. Simply, just to show where the mind is in an instance and where it should not be, could be a decisive factor in how care is approached.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision [DSM-5-TR] does no provide this for postpartum psychosis. It is generally a book of labels and descriptions not of components of the mind and their mechanisms.
So, accelerating towards better care, electrical and chemical signals of neurons can be assumed to be the human mind, as theorized in electrochemical psychiatry.
Conceptual Brain Science
Electrochemical psychiatry is a division of conceptual brain science, where the human mind is defined as the collection of all the electrical and chemical signals, with their interactions and attributes, in sets, in clusters of neurons, across the central and peripheral nervous systems. Simply, the human mind is the sets of signals.
A memory is a specific configuration or formation of electrical and chemical signals in a set. The same applies to an emotion, a feeling and the regulation of an internal signal.
Simply, functions are a result of interactions of signals, for specificity in configurations.
In the central and peripheral nervous systems, neuroscience has established that neurons are often in clusters: nuclei and ganglia respectively.
It is theorized here that electrical and chemical signals are in sets [or loops] in those clusters.
It is in those sets that they configure functions specifically. It is where they also distribute summaries of what they configured to other sets, interacting along the way such that without an appropriate fit, there is no interpretation [accurate or not], so they have to keep going until they terminate at the sets [they can] fit.
Electrical and chemical signals have to interact in sets, to determine functions, conceptually.
Interactions are postulated as the strikes of electrical signals on chemical signals, in sets.
There are factors, attributes or features that determine the extent to which they interact. They include prioritization, pre-prioritization, splits, old sequences, new sequences, principal spot, arrays, thick sets, thin sets, intensity and so on.
It is the chemical signals that hold the configuration for functions, while electrical signals strike them in interactions to obtain the complete configuration, for a specific measure of a function.
Attributes of functions are obtained by the states of the signals at the time of the interactions. So, attention — for example — is an attribute. It is the same what it means when a set of signals is prioritized. Just one set is prioritized, others are pre-prioritized.
Psychosis
Delusions are described around fixed and false beliefs. Hallucinations with false perceptions. Both, above a certain threshold are mental illnesses.
In delusion, there could be a few problems, first with splits, next with sequences, which should have used an old one instead making a new one, and that the volume-variation for subjectivity, may be deficient creating a detachment from the self [or some dignity].
In hallucination, seeing something and taking it for something else may follow a similar process, where some of the features and interactions of sets of signals are defective.
There is a problem with splits that should acquire other properties in pre-prioritization, or to acquire them quickly in prioritization and move on.
There is also a problem with sequences, where new sequences are preferred [for the acquisition of certain properties] than old ones.
The new sequences could fade off or not be used again-if it completes, making some regular experiences seem new.
There could also be pleasure or a variation of it in the principal spot, or something else, so that it attracts several un-split pre-prioritized interactions.
These could be simplified and visualized in a way to show what the mind is doing in episodes of postpartum psychosis, as an approximate measure to seek care, heighten caution and share understanding with loved ones.
There recent stories in the news of postpartum depression and psychosis are opportunities for the American Psychiatric Association to explore new directions towards answers, possibly by September 1, 2026.
It is possible to move beyond labels, into elements that would give a better expression of the mind: electrical and chemical signals. This is expressed in Conceptual Biomarkers and Theoretical Biological Factors for Psychiatric and Intelligence Nosology.
There is another recent [August, 2026] analysis in The New York Times, When Depression Resists Treatment, stating that, “But many doctors, he said, consider depression to be treatment-resistant if a person has not experienced at least a 50 percent improvement after trying two different antidepressants in succession, each for four to six weeks.”
“One additional therapy that has been shown to help people with treatment-resistant depression is transcranial magnetic stimulation, or T.M.S., which was cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat depression in 2008, Dr. Kahn said.”
iStock image
