Cultural Lens around Postpartum Depression In Asian context : Literature Review

Abstract

Postpartum depression is a medical term that refers to a mental illness that begins as a woman embarks on the journey of biological motherhood. Wherein this term has been borrowed from the west, owing to a significant lag in understanding of the cultural making of this condition, there is a need for deconstructing this condition from a cross-cultural lens. This paper would be an attempt to explore how mothers are situated in the postpartum phase across different cultures in the context of rituals and beliefs practiced during the postpartum period. There is a need for stocktaking of the cultural pinnings of the postpartum period and mothering practices in the genesis of postpartum depression. A rich understanding of postpartum depression is incomplete without taking cultural embeddedness into account. The larger objectives of this review paper are: exploring the rituals and beliefs around postpartum period and postpartum depression across Asian cultures; where and how postpartum depression is understood in these cultures; and how the mother is (re)constructed in the context of postpartum rituals. In the paper, prospective directions of research are discussed