As editor of the Springer-Verlag Series in Psychopathology, Lauren Alloy knew of my work in cognitive psychophysiology to study processing anomalies in nonpatients at risk for psychopathology and invited me to edit a book for the series. This evolved into an opportunity to address an aspect of the unfortunate nature-nurture battle in the field, which too often emphasizes genes and macrolevel environment. Extreme positions are often taken (sometimes unwittingly), even though a great deal of the actual research is between the extremes, including laboratory psycho logical and psychophysiological...

Postpartum Depression: Causes and Consequences chronicles a decade and a half of research into this relatively common mood disorder experienced in various forms by between 10-40% of all women following delivery. The author has conducted three major studies all of which are presented in this volume. The most recent study comprises the bulk of the monograph and presents the results with regard to psychological, social and hormonal factors in postpartum depression and the blues. Information regarding the epidemiology, etiology and treatment of postpartum depression is also included. The...

"Depression runs in families." Above all, the goal of this book is to come to some conclusions about the meaning of that simple assertion, which has a far from simple ex- planation of meaning. This book is designed to address some of the gaps in previous research on depressive disorders in the family context: the sheer numbers of people with affective disorders marks them as our most common psychiatric problem.