PUERPERAL PSYCHOSES AND THEIR SEQUELLÆ
Abstract
1. The assembling of statistical data on psychoses associated with childbirth appears to show that their frequency is heavily influenced by situational and social factors. These psychoses do not appear to be of fixed constancy in relation to the total number of births in the community or to the biogenic psychoses in the population.
2. The only consistent or characteristic element in true postpartum psychoses is delirium, which appears in varying intensity. No specific endogenous or exogenous factor is revealed, although complex endocrine imbalance cannot be definitely eliminated at this time.
3. In women of cyclothymic disposition a delirious mania following childbirth may lead to an increased frequency and an easier tendency to manic-depressive cycling, even though subsequent pregnancies do not occur.
4. The purely delirious types which recover rapidly are individuals who are generally of stable pre-psychotic matrix. However, subsequent attacks of delirium occur in some, which indicate a low threshold to this type of psychosis and to no other.
5. The most persistent and tragic residues are found in those women whose personality structure is in the schizothymic direction and whose inheritance is tainted. Here the outstanding trend is to hebephrenic regression.
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