ABSTRACT
This chapter will discuss the psychological aspects of pregnancy health and pregnancy health care, in their social and cultural contexts, and describe how explanatory theories are shaped, historically, by prevailing stereotypes. Contrary to arguments that perinatal mental health problems are attributable to individual psychological vulnerabilities, the weight of evidence is that they are multifactorially determined by interactions among social, cultural and contextual risk and protective factors. Psychologically-informed pregnancy health services in which there is a rights-based approach to care can empower women and optimize mental health. However, protection and promotion of pregnancy-related psychological functioning will require social inequalities to be addressed through the realization of girls’ and women’s human rights to education, nutrition, gender-sensitive health care, equal social and economic participation, personal safety, individual autonomy and freedom from discrimination.
