ABSTRACT
The psychological experience of motherhood is gaining attention in the public and academic spheres and as an area of specialty appealing to therapists from both a professional and personal level. It still surprises the author when accomplished clinicians confess how nervous this work makes them at times. Or how concerned they are about the details of assessment and treatment with postpartum women when they have been practicing in the mental health field for years. Complicated issues such as childbirth and delivery choices, psychopharmacologic options, terminations, assisted reproduction, unplanned pregnancies, adoption, infertility, genetic testing and screening procedures, selective termination, and multiple pregnancies are just a few. Learning how to reframe someone's perceived weakness into a strength is a skill that can transcend almost any other therapeutic intervention. The principles people apply to themselves as the facilitator of postpartum healing also apply to ourselves as experts in the treatment of postpartum depression.
