“Post-partum depression” has been discussed as an identifiable, measurable, treatable disorder for 50 years now. Thresholds, scales, prevalence rates: everything seems clear, even reassuring.
But this binary model — it’s either depression or not depression — obscures a more subtle reality: new parenthood is disruptive, makes us vulnerable and places us all on a spectrum of distress.
The notion of post-partum depression was established in 1968, primarily because it responded to dual academic and medical requirements: to lend scientific legitimacy to the suffering of new mothers and to provide a clear and specific diagnostic framework for a particular period of life.
