ABSTRACT
Women are seen as the victims of their bodies, particularly the raging hormones that plague their lives from adolescence to late middle age. Science, clinical experts and popular myths portray women as emotionally and intellectually unreliable, unpredictable, deficient and a psychological puzzle-all because, for some of their adulthood, they have the capacity to ovulate (Caplan and Caplan, 1994; Gannon, 1994). Post-natal depression is part of that belief system. For centuries women have been dying from childbirth and experiencing severe ill-health caused by the stresses and strains of motherhood (Shorter, 1984). So why is depression in the weeks and months following birth perceived as ‘atypical’ (Nicolson, 1992a; Ussher, 1991)? Women’s capacity and determination to bear and nurture children under adversity seems endless; but it is not their resilience that interests scientists and clinicians. It is their failure.
