AFTER her fourth child was born in January, a 34-year-old housewife suddenly began entertaining thoughts of suicide and walking out on her family.

Stressed, exhausted and overworked, she fell into post-natal depression. 'The youngest one kept me from completing my daily chores,' she said. 'The cooking was delayed, I couldn't help my other children with their studies...Everything just piled up.'

Soon, she felt guilty for being a bad mother and cried while breast-feeding - her only quiet time. 'I blamed myself: Why can't I finish the work? I'm not a good mother.'

She was diagnosed only three months later, after being screened at KK Women's and Children's Hospital. With counselling and medication, she has since recovered.

She said: 'I didn't know where to go for help, and I thought the depression would go away, but it weighed more and more heavily on my shoulders. It's lightened up now.'

Other sufferers were not treated in time.

Two years ago, part-time supermarket packer Wong Lih Tyng, then 36, wrapped her stillborn baby in a towel and a trash bag, and stashed it in a staff locker at the supermarket where she worked. It was discovered only two weeks later when colleagues opened the locker with a spare key after detecting a foul smell.

Diagnosed with post-natal depression, Ms Wong was spared from jail and put on 15 months probation.

In 2004, a cancer-stricken and similarly depressed Madam Christine Yap Cheng Chui, 34, killed herself and her two daughters aged two and three, by leaping from a block of flats with them.