著者

松岡 悦子

雑誌

旭川医科大学紀要(一般教育) (ISSN:03878090)

巻号頁・発行日

no.22, pp.41-52, 2006-03

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出版社版Although matemity blues and postnatal depression occur frequently in industrialized countries,they donot exist in every society or during every period of time. This paper tries to investigatehow these diagnostic categories have taken shape through looking at medical articles between the1840's and 1960's. The process involved in how these categories have come into existenceparallels changes in the way women have given birth in both America and the UK, the twocountries which produce most articles on these disorders.Presently postpartum mood disorders are classified into three categories:puerperal psychosis,postnatal depression and maternity blues.Until 1940's,articles conceming postpartummental illness centered on puerperal psychosis while they disregarded the two other categories.This is because women who developed severe symptoms some time after birth were taken intohospital for treatment as doctors did not have a chance to observe postpartum women in generalbecause the majority of them gave birth at home. Between the l950's and 1968'symptoms ofmaternity blues and postnatal depression came to be recognized, as the ratio of women havinghospital birth increased to a degree where doctors could classify various symptoms found in women who had given birth in hospitals. In 1968,classification into the three classificationcategories was established by psychiatrists and scales to measure them were devised and appliedto women in various societies.It is proposed that these three categories are the result of the medicalization of women's moodsand behaviors after childbirth to which doctors,mainly psychiatrists,gave a label as theyconsidered these behaviors to be deviant from the norm. This delineates the existence of gendernorms that are implicitly fostered and utilized as a point of reference by medical doctors who arepredominantly male.