This Article  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

By James Alexander Hamilton, Ph.D., M.D. Price, $6.85. Pp. 156. The C. V. Mosby Company, 3207 Washington Blvd., St. Louis, Mo., 1962.

Peter Barglow, M.D., Reviewer

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1962;7(3):231-232.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

This book for psychiatrists, obstetricians, and general practitioners contains a comprehensive review of the symptomatology, pathogenesis, and treatment of postpartum psychiatric illness, and incorporates an excellent historical description of the literature in this field beginning with Marcé in 1858.

The author notes that "variability, progression, and unpredictability are characteristic of puerperal syndromes." He separates these syndromes according to predominant affects and symptomatology and devotes individual chapters to mania and depression, delirium, and "disassociation."

Minimizing psychogenic etiology he asserts that puerperal mental illness represents a distinct disease entity, "related to physiological changes that involve the endocrine system." He notes the organic flavor of the illness, the similarities to myxedema madness, a usual severalday latency period, and the apparent absence of premorbid personality deviations in support of this conclusion.

Sections of the book devoted to thyroid pharmacotherapy represent the author's original research contribution. The use of thyroid in . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?