In addition, the new mother is not allowed to bathe or shower, wash her hair, clean her teeth, leave the house, or be blown by the wind. Media
Certain cases of postpartum mental health concerns received attention in the media and brought about dialogue on ways to address and understand more on postpartum mental health. Andrea Yates, a former nurse, became pregnant for the first time in 1993. After giving birth to five children in the coming years, she had severe depression and had many depressive episodes. This led to her believing that her children needed to be saved, and that by killing them, she could rescue their eternal souls. She drowned her children one by one over the course of an hour, by holding their heads under water in their family bathtub. When called into trial, she felt that she had saved her children rather than harming them and that this action would contribute to defeating Satan.This was one of the first public and notable cases of postpartum psychosis, which helped create dialogue on womens mental health after childbirth. The court found that Yates was experiencing mental illness concerns, and the trial started the conversation of mental illness in cases of murder and whether or not it would lessen the sentence or not. It also started a dialogue on women going against "maternal instinct" after childbirth and what maternal instinct was truly defined by.Yates case brought wide media attention to the problem of filicide, or the murder of children by their parents.
Ideas surrounding womens moods and states have been around for a long time, typically recorded by men. In 460 B.C., Hippocrates wrote about puerperal fever, agitation, delirium, and mania experienced by women after child birth. Hippocrates ideas still linger in how postpartum depression is seen today.A woman who lived in the 14th century, Margery Kempe, was a Christian mystic. She was a pilgrim known as "Madwoman" after having a tough labor and delivery. There was a long physical recovery period during which she started descending into "madness" and became suicidal. Based on her descriptions of visions of demons and conversations she wrote about that she had with religious figures like God and the Virgin Mary, historians have identified what Margery Kempe was experiencing as "postnatal psychosis" and not postpartum depression. This distinction became important to emphasize the difference between postpartum depression and postpartum psychosis. A 16th century physician, Castello Branco, documented a case of postpartum depression without the formal title as a relatively healthy woman with melancholy after childbirth, remained insane for a month, and recovered with treatment. Although this treatment was not described, experimental treatments began to be implemented for postpartum depression for the centuries that followed. Connections between female reproductive function and mental illness would continue to center around reproductive organs from this time all the way through to modern age, with a slowly evolving discussion around "female madness". 19th century and after
With the 19th century came a new attitude about the relationship between female mental illness and pregnancy, childbirth, or menstruation.