The Marcé Society, a multidisciplinary group set up in 1980 to advance the understanding, prevention and treatment of post-partum mental illness, met in York for its biennial meeting last September to celebrate its tenth birthday. In the middle of the 19th century, Louis Marcé first drew attention to the special nature of psychiatric illness in the puerperium. Since then, as opening speaker, Dr Channi Kumar pointed out, although maternal morbidity has dropped dramatically, in particular over the last 40 years with improvements in obstetric care together with social, cultural and educational changes, psychiatric morbidity in the puerperium remains as prevalent as it was 100 years ago.