From Riccardo Baschetti
Padua, Italy
Ruth Paradice, a British psychologist, suggests that postnatal depression is
a form of grieving for a lost lifestyle (This Week, 20 July, p 7). As has
recently been shown (May issue of Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and
Metabolism, p 1912), postnatal depression is simply due to the central
suppression of hypothalamic corticotrophin-releasing hormone secretion during
the postpartum period.
In his recent essay “Burying Freud” (The Lancet, 9 March, p 669),
Professor Tallis appropriately points out that “Psychoanalysts have frequently
imitated their master in attributing to psychological causes serious illnesses
that have organic origins, with often fatal consequences.”
