ABSTRACT
The psychiatry of childbearing (synonyms: mother-infant psychiatry, perinatal psychiatry) has advanced greatly in the past 20 years. The world literature on the subject has more than doubled. The nosological framework provided by the International Classification of Diseases, version 10 (ICD-10) and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 4th edition (DSM-IV) no longer covers the wide variety of disorders closely or specifically related to pregnancy, parturition and the puerperium. Most of the research has been conducted in Europe and North America, but the pattern of disease in these places, where maternal mortality has fallen to less than 20 in 105 births, with a corresponding fall in morbidity, may not match that seen in countries whose maternal mortality is 100 times that figure. It is in the latter countries that most of the infants are born, and their morbidity may be similar to that seen in Europe in the nineteenth century.
