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Signs of the times: universalism and localism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2020

John Cox
John Cox*
Affiliation:
Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Keele University, Staffordshire, UK. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

At a time when nationalism has reappeared in Europe, when COVID-19 is not yet quarantined and when compassion coexists with grief, there is a need to consider the impact of these societal changes on international collaboration, frequency and management of perinatal mental disorder – and new roles for psychiatrists and other health professionals in the digital and AI (artificial intelligence) post-COVID era.

Keywords

Perinatal mental healthperson-centred carecross-cultural psychiatryCOVID-19international psychiatry
Type
Editorial
Information
BJPsych International , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , August 2020 , pp. 49
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Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2020

‘On becoming pregnant a woman enters a world of uncertainties, fears and threats […] quite often anxiety wins out over veneration and contentment’, Henri Collomb (1913–1979)

These thematic papers from France,Reference Sutter-Dallay, Glangeaud-Freudenthal and Gresier1 ChinaReference Schwank, Zhou, He and Acharya2 and AfricaReference Ng'oma, Bitew, Kaiyo-Utete, Hanlon, Honikman and Stewart3 could continue this discussion. They each provide a ray of light in a dark place and suggest care pathways for families with perinatal mental disorder that respect the past but pioneer the future. They show how to collaborate with colleagues and those with lived experience, how to improve the prospects for well-being by the integration of mental health with infant and child health services. They recommend more translational perinatal research, including economic outcomes, to underpin guidelines and to influence service managers and politicians.

France

Sutter-Dallay and her French colleaguesReference Sutter-Dallay, Glangeaud-Freudenthal and Gresier1 are rightly proud of their 19th-century clinician/researchers – Louis-Victor Marcé and Jean-Étienne Esquirol – and of their child psychiatry pioneers of mother and baby units. French contributions to psychoanalytic and ethnographic perspectives are pertinent to perinatal psychiatry.Reference Cox4

China

In the paper from China by Schwank et al, readers are reminded of the adverse effect of the one-child policy on maternal mental health, and the strong preference for boys.Reference Schwank, Zhou, He and Acharya2 The stigma of a perinatal mental disorder from within the family is prominent in Shanghai, and assessment and treatment online are the preferred care pathways.

Africa

In Sub-Saharan Africa, Ng'oma from MalawiReference Ng'oma, Bitew, Kaiyo-Utete, Hanlon, Honikman and Stewart3 and other African collaborators from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Ethiopia consider the findings of an impressive range of community studies. Their paper draws attention to how the researchers working across language boundaries rode the twin tracks of the universalist etic perspective and the emic understanding of personal meaning. The etic and emic approach is derived from the linguistic terms phonetic and phonemic.Reference Skultans, Cox, Skultans and Cox5

World Psychiatric Association

The WPA has urged all healthcare professionals and policy makers to improve pregnancy outcomes, reduce maternal and infant morbidity and mortality, improve the care of infants and enhance the mother–infant relationship.6 This relationship-based ‘body–mind–spirit’ approach to perinatal mental disorder, implicit in these three papers, can inspire us in a post-COVID-19 changing world.

Declaration of interest

None.

References

Sutter-Dallay, A-L, Glangeaud-Freudenthal, NM-C, Gresier, F. Perinatal mental health around the world: priorities for research and service development in France. BJPsych Int 2020; this issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwank, S, Zhou, Q, He, Y, Acharya, G. Perinatal mental health around the world: priorities for research and service development in China. BJPsych Int 2020; this issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ng'oma, M, Bitew, T, Kaiyo-Utete, M, Hanlon, C, Honikman, S, Stewart, RC. Perinatal mental health around the world: priorities for research and service development in Africa. BJPsych Int 2020; this issue.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, JL. Antenatal and postnatal mental disorder: dynamic and cultural perspectives. Dyn Psychiatr 2007; 40: 37–50.Google Scholar
Skultans, V, Cox, JL. Introduction. In Anthropological Approaches to Psychological Medicine: Crossing Bridges (ed Skultans, V, Cox, JL). Jessica Kingsley, 2000.Google Scholar
World Psychiatric Association. Position Statement on Perinatal Mental Health. WPA, 2017.Google Scholar
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