‘I have a kind husband, a beautiful baby, no financial problems and still I want to die’

In the 1960s, medical professionals had not yet reached a consensus on how pregnancy and birth affected women’s mental health. Many doctors lacked interest and could not agree on whether childbirth depression was different from general depression. Although women were interested in talking about “childbirth depression”, it was taboo to share such testimonies in public. Therefore, their awareness and understanding of maternal mental illness remained limited.

Focusing on the early 1970s, this paper will explore how these attitudes changed. Set within the Women’s Liberation Movement, it will illustrate how women started to share their testimonies of maternal mental illness via letters, on the radio, and through hotlines, leading to the emergence of new grass-roots support groups for mothers. By analysing women’s “ordinary” testimonies from the BBC archives (letters and transcripts of interviews), the British Film Institute, the feminist magazine Spare Rib, and the hotline group ‘Depressives Anonymous’, it will evaluate how women’s maternal mental illness narratives developed in the 1970s. This paper will build on the history of motherhood and maternal mental illness, ‘everyday’ narratives as ‘patient experts’, health advice, and, more broadly, the limitations posed by gender, class and race dynamics in the mass media.

This seminar series has been organised by the UCL Health Humanities Centre. The centre draws together staff from different disciplines, departments and faculties engaged in teaching and research on matters relating to health, illness and well-being. 

Photo by Camila Quintero Franco on Unsplash