Depression

[gobenn]

In what year was the term "post-natal depression" first used? Thanks in advance.

[dotty.]

1986

[Mosaic]

Nay Dotty nay. The eldest tessera entered the world then and we were all clued up to spot post-natal depression so it must be before then.
I can remember my mum's magazines referring to 'the baby blues' in the late 1960s, I think, but not pnd as such. I guess some time in the 1970s.

[archeraddict]

I think Dotty is right about when it was first termed PND. It was following a big study in Edinburgh.

However, I started my nurse training in 1982 and we certainly knew then that mums could get 'the blues'. I think it's just about studying it properly and coming up with an accurate cause and name, which they did in the 80s.

[dotty.]

It wasn't so early was it? Reading up on it, before then it was post-partum depression and was blamed simply on tiredness due to lack of sleep and poor diet probably

[Mosaic]

I can remember in 1984 and 85 reading about psychological reactions to new babies including depression, and including it being caused by other people's expectations on the new mother as well as tiredness etc. Maybe this was from a group called then the Association of Radical Midwives (a laugh a minute they were), and also the writings of Sheila Kitzinger.

[tommy-h]

Brice Pitt,nov.1968,BJP Atypical depression following childbirth-puerperal depression....

[dotty.]

So in 1968 the term 'Post natal Depression' wasn't being used, nor in the 1970s, it's looking more late 1980s still.

[Mosaic]

I'd advise checking Kitzinger's publications to be sure. I suspect PND de veloped as a common term something like ME that crept into popular usage in the 1990s, having been an affliction recognised and named by the chattering classes some time earlier.

[Quizmonster]

The earliest recorded use of the phrase, post-natal depression, appeared in The Guardian in 1973, as noted by The Oxford English Dictionary. It may well have been used earlier in speech, but we'll never know, so 1973 it is.

[cjc678]

The term used in the late seventies was puerperal psychosis