Abstract
This book contains a comprehensive review of current knowledge of the biological aspects of postpartum mood disorders. Unfortunately, its title suggests something far broader and a clinician with little background in this field would gain the impression from this book that these mood disorders were entirely biological in aetiology. Within the confines of the biological aspects, the chapters are thorough, covering most of the important up-to-date hypotheses (as indeed they are) of the hormonal basis for these disorders. There is an attempt, too, to link this with other hormone-related mood disorders and other psychiatric disorders. The treatment section comprises some third of the book and is broader, including input from the dedicated North American self-help group, as well as a review of psychological treatments. This latter section is the only time the all-too-common family and marital issues are discussed as being important.
For clinicians with a specific biological/hormonal interest, this book is useful. For those who want a better perspective, this book could be usefully supplemented with Treating postnatal depression – a psychological approach for health care practitioners [1] which covers the other side of the story.