Montreal, Nov 16 (The Conversation) “Post-partum depression” has been discussed as an identifiable, measurable, treatable disorder for 50 years now. Thresholds, scales, prevalence rates: everything seems clear, even reassuring.

But this binary model — it’s either depression or not depression — obscures a more subtle reality: new parenthood is disruptive, makes us vulnerable and places us all on a spectrum of distress.

The notion of post-partum depression was established in 1968, primarily because it responded to dual academic and medical requirements: to lend scientific legitimacy to the suffering of new mothers and to provide a clear and specific diagnostic framework for a particular period of life.

At the time, emphasis was placed on the atypical nature of this depression, which resem

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