Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction
- Part one At-risk groups
- 2 Primary prevention of childhood mental health problems
- 3 Primary prevention: assessing the relevance of life-events and difficulties among primary care attenders
- 4 The prevention of postnatal depression
- 5 Bereavement
- 6 Preventing mental illness amongst people of ethnic minorities
- 7 The prevention of mental illness in people with learning disability
- 8 The role of counselling in primary prevention
- Part two Early detection in primary care
- Part three Limiting disability and preventing relapse
- Index
4 - The prevention of postnatal depression
from Part one - At-risk groups
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- List of contributors
- 1 Introduction
- Part one At-risk groups
- 2 Primary prevention of childhood mental health problems
- 3 Primary prevention: assessing the relevance of life-events and difficulties among primary care attenders
- 4 The prevention of postnatal depression
- 5 Bereavement
- 6 Preventing mental illness amongst people of ethnic minorities
- 7 The prevention of mental illness in people with learning disability
- 8 The role of counselling in primary prevention
- Part two Early detection in primary care
- Part three Limiting disability and preventing relapse
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Childbirth is often assumed to be a universally happy event and for most women it is a major life event of great psychological significance. However, recent research has revealed that the months surrounding the birth bring with them the greatest lifetime risk for women of developing a mental illness (Kendell, Chalmers & Platz, 1987).
The baby blues
Postnatal depression is a term that is sometimes used to describe a variety of emotional disorders that occur in women after childbirth. However, it is more useful to reserve the term for a specific depressive illness affecting around 10% to 15% of women in the first year after birth (see Box 4.1). It must be distinguished from the ‘baby blues’ which affects as many as 50% of women in the first week after childbirth. The blues is characterised by tearfulness and emotional lability, usually responds to simple reassurance, is self-limiting, and is most likely to have a hormonal aetiology (Stein, 1982; Yalom et al., 1968; Pitt, 1973).
Puerperal psychosis
In a very few instances the blues may herald the onset of a much rarer disorder, puerperal psychosis. This very serious illness affects only 1–2 women per thousand and has its onset in the first month after the birth (Paffenbarger, 1964; Kendell et al., 1987; Brockington & Cox-Roper, 1988). Puerperal psychosis is a florid disorder which may manifest itself with signs of either mania or depression.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Prevention of Mental Illness in Primary Care , pp. 57 - 73Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996
- 1
- Cited by