ABSTRACT
In 1984 a local female consultant psychiatrist in charge of mothers and babies in the South Bucks area joined forces with a health visitor and special care nurse to launch the first group for mothers suffering from postnatal depression. They were united by the recognition of growing numbers of women in the post-partum period suffering from depression and a need for an opportunity to talk about their problems in some depth. This form of depression, which affects 10-15 per cent of new mothers, is to be distinguished from both the ‘baby blues’, which can occur a few days after the birth and generally clears up quite quickly, and puerperal psychosis, a psychotic illness which needs immediate hospitalisation, the incidence of which is one or two per 1,000 births, although it has recently been suggested that it may be higher than this (Lucas 1994).
