A History of the Definition and Diagnosis of Postpartum Depression as a Disease

该奖项支持科学史上的一个项目，该项目分析了20世纪下半叶美国产后抑郁症疾病概念的产生和扩散。它追溯了产后抑郁症（分娩后一年发病的抑郁症）的医学、大众和政治语言的动员，作为不同群体定义产后正常和不正常的一种手段。研究将涉及档案研究和口述历史；对这些来源的分析将以危险疾病、躯体公民、性别、情感和体现的理论化为指导。这项研究的结果将作为一本书出版，这将引起医生、精神病学家和其他对产妇心理健康感兴趣的人的兴趣。参与产后抑郁症作为一种独特疾病编纂的演员的口述历史记录将为未来对妇女健康行动主义和心理健康政治感兴趣的研究人员提供。该研究人员还将为高年级本科生设计一门以性别和心理健康为重点的课程，并将通过在全国性报纸和妇女健康出版物上的专栏进行公共宣传，将这项工作转化为公众。这个关于产后抑郁症历史的研究项目将从一个批判性的角度来考虑不同的行为者如何参与诊断的政治，以及在多层次的政治背景下寻找原因和解决方案。这项研究的主要成果是一本专著，将在更广泛的性别风险框架内考虑这些问题。该项目与妇女健康、心理健康和20世纪美国政治的文献直接对话。贡献包括检查产妇风险和儿童发展文献如何塑造产妇心理健康的构建，对20世纪后期的性别国家政治进行细致入微的调查，因为他们引导多个群体接受产后抑郁症的病因，以满足他们自己的目的，以及对这种特定性别和家族疾病的疾病构建和风险的调查。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports a project in the history of science that analyzes the production and proliferation of the disease concept of postpartum depression in the United States during the second half of the twentieth century. It traces the mobilization of medical, popular, and political languages of postpartum depression (depression with onset in the year following childbirth) as a means by which different groups defined the normal and abnormal postpartum. The research will engage in archival research and oral histories; the analysis of these sources will be guided by the theorization of diseases of risk, somatic citizenship, and gender, emotion and embodiment. The results of this research will be published as a book that will interest physicians, psychiatrists, and others interested in maternal mental health. Transcripts of oral histories with actors involved in the codification of postpartum depression as a distinct disease will be made available for future researchers interested in women's health activism and mental health politics. The researcher will also design a course for upper-level undergraduates focusing on gender and mental health, and she will engage in public outreach through op-eds in national newspapers and women's health publications that will translate this work to a general public. This research project on the history of postpartum depression will take a critical perspective in considering how different actors participated in the politics of diagnosis and the search for causes and solutions within a layered political context. The primary product of this research, a monograph, will consider these questions within a broader framework of gendered risk. The project converses directly with literatures of women's health, mental health, and 20th century U.S. politics. Contributions include an examination of how maternal risk and child development literature shaped the construction of maternal mental health, a nuanced investigation of the gendered national politics of the late-20th century as they led multiple groups to accept etiologies of postpartum depression that served their own aims, and an investigation into disease construction and risk in this specifically gendered and familial disease.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.