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Margery Kempe's Struggle With Postpartum Psychosis

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This creatur went owt of hir mende: Margery Kempe’s Struggle with Postpartum Psychosis The idea of Postpartum depression or psychosis is a worrisome topic for any woman, however one is left to speculate what this condition would be like during the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries, when a woman would have little to no treatment available for this condition. In the Book of Margery Kempe, we have an idea of what this was like. Margery’s story was an opportunity to hear the voice of a woman with a serious mental illness living 600 years ago (Craun 2005). After Margery Kempe’s close encounter with death during the birth of her first child, she is thrown into an eight-month period of postpartum psychosis that led to a more long-term depressive period in which she sought out healing through her faith. We can conclude on a diagnosis of Postpartum Psychosis because she has paranoid, grandiose, and bizarre delusions, mood swings, confused thinking, and grossly disorganized behavior. As the …show more content…

“The Story of Margery Kempe.” Psychiatric Services (Washington, D.C.) 56, no. 6 (2005): 655–56
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual: Mental Disorders. American Psychiatric Association, 2013
Kempe, Margery. “Book of Margery Kempe, The.” Edited by Lynn Staley, Robbins Library Digital Projects, University of Rochester, 1996, d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/publication/staley-the-book-of-margery-kempe.
Jefferies, Diana, and Debbie Horsfall . “Forged by Fire: Margery Kempe’s Account of Postnatal Psychosis.” Project Muse: Literature and Medicine, vol. 32, no. 2, 2014
“What Is Postpartum Depression & Anxiety?” American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, www.apa.org/pi/women/resources/reports/postpartum-depression.aspx.
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. 3rd ed., Routledge, 2015
Windeatt, B. A. “Julian of Norwich and Her Audience.” The Review of English Studies, vol. 28, no. 109, Feb. 1977, pp. 1–17.

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