The Oxford Handbook of Perinatal Psychology
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The Oxford Handbook of Perinatal Psychology is a comprehensive scholarly reference covering psychological, biological, emotional, and social experiences during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period.
Edited by a licensed psychologist and leading authority in evidence-based psychotherapy, it brings together contributions from researchers and clinicians across the field of perinatal mental health.
This handbook is built for clinicians, researchers, graduate students, and educators who need a rigorous, research-grounded resource on perinatal mental health. Its scope extends far beyond postpartum depression.
The book addresses the full range of perinatal psychopathology, typical adjustment across pregnancy and the postpartum period, evidence-based clinical interventions, and complex presentations including pregnancy loss, infertility, high-risk birth, and cross-cultural parenthood.
Book Details
Edited by Amy Wenzel, PhD, ABPP, this volume was published by Oxford University Press as part of the Oxford Library of Psychology series. It focuses on Psychology / Clinical Psychology / Perinatal Psychology and is available in both online and print formats.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Series: Oxford Library of Psychology
Online ISBN: 9780199984336
Print ISBN: 9780199778072
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199778072.001.0001
Published online: January 13, 2014
Print availability: April 28, 2016
About This Handbook
The Oxford Handbook of Perinatal Psychology brings together scholarship across psychology, psychiatry, and clinical science to create one of the most thorough references available on mental health in the perinatal period. The handbook is organized to serve both researchers seeking an authoritative literature review and clinicians who need practical, evidence-based frameworks for assessment and treatment.
Perinatal psychology addresses the psychological dimensions of pregnancy, childbirth, and early parenthood. This period is marked by rapid hormonal, biological, relational, and social change. Most people navigate it without serious difficulty, but a significant number develop clinically meaningful anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, or trauma responses.
The transition to parenthood is also shaped by circumstances such as infertility, pregnancy loss, high-risk delivery, and cultural context. The handbook accounts for all of these experiences in a single, peer-reviewed volume.
The book draws on biological, psychological, and social frameworks to present a biopsychosocial model of perinatal adjustment. It does not reduce the subject to any single diagnostic category or treatment modality. Instead, it maps the full terrain of perinatal mental health, giving readers the conceptual tools to understand what is typical, what constitutes clinically significant distress, and which interventions have the strongest empirical support.
Oxford University Press published the handbook in its Oxford Library of Psychology series, a collection of authoritative handbooks covering major fields in psychological science. The series is designed for scholars and practitioners who need expert synthesis of a complex research literature, presented in a format that supports both systematic study and targeted reference.
What the Handbook Covers
The Oxford Handbook of Perinatal Psychology is organized into six major thematic sections. Each section draws on peer-reviewed research and is written by contributors with direct expertise in their area.
Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period
The first section addresses the typical psychological, biological, relational, and infant developmental changes that accompany pregnancy and early parenthood. It provides a research-based baseline for understanding what normal adjustment looks like across the perinatal period, which is an essential context for identifying when clinical intervention is warranted.
Topics include hormonal changes, sleep disruption, couple relationship adjustment, parent-infant attachment, and the developmental demands of the transition to parenthood. This section is useful for clinicians who want to distinguish normative perinatal stress from clinical psychopathology, and for researchers studying healthy perinatal adjustment.
Perinatal Psychopathology
This section covers the clinical conditions that commonly emerge or worsen during pregnancy and the postpartum period. It addresses perinatal depression, anxiety disorders, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, substance use disorders, and severe psychopathology, including psychosis.
Research consistently shows that perinatal mental health conditions are underdiagnosed and undertreated. This section gives clinicians and researchers detailed coverage of diagnostic criteria, prevalence data, risk factors, and clinical presentation for each condition. The depth of coverage in this section reflects the breadth of perinatal psychopathology as a field and the clinical complexity that practitioners encounter in perinatal care settings.
Clinical Intervention and Treatment
The clinical intervention section reviews screening approaches, evidence-based psychotherapy, psychopharmacological considerations during pregnancy and lactation, complementary treatment approaches, and prevention strategies.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Perinatal Distress is among the most rigorously studied treatments for perinatal anxiety and depression. The handbook situates CBT within a broader treatment landscape, allowing readers to understand how different modalities compare, where each has the strongest evidence, and how treatment should be adapted for pregnant and postpartum patients.
Psychopharmacology coverage includes considerations specific to pregnancy and breastfeeding, which are essential for any clinician working collaboratively with prescribers in perinatal care.
Pregnancy Loss, Infertility, and High-Risk Birth
This section addresses experiences that are often overlooked in perinatal mental health resources but that carry significant psychological weight. It covers the psychological impact of miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal loss, infertility treatment, and medically complicated pregnancies.
Coping With Infertility, Miscarriage, and Neonatal Loss by the same editor, addresses similar terrain in a more accessible format for individuals and families. The handbook chapter coverage is aimed at clinicians and researchers who need a scholarly treatment of these topics, including research on grief, traumatic birth experiences, and psychological sequelae of high-risk obstetric events.
Special Populations and Cross-Cultural Issues
The final content section moves beyond the standard postpartum depression framework to address populations and contexts that require tailored clinical understanding. It covers adolescent parents, incarcerated and low-income women, LGBTQ+ parents, and cross-cultural variation in perinatal psychological adjustment.
This section is particularly valuable for clinicians working in community health, correctional settings, or culturally diverse patient populations. It challenges the field to apply perinatal mental health knowledge in ways that account for structural inequality, intersecting identities, and the cultural meanings that shape the experience of pregnancy and parenthood.
Anxiety in Childbearing Women offers supplementary depth on one of the most prevalent clinical presentations covered in this section.
Who Should Read This Book
The Oxford Handbook of Perinatal Psychology is written for a professional and academic audience. It is not a self-help resource or a clinical manual. Its primary readers include:
Researchers and academics: who study perinatal mental health, maternal psychology, developmental psychology, or health psychology. The handbook provides comprehensive literature reviews that support dissertation work, grant writing, and research design.
Graduate students: in clinical psychology, counseling psychology, social work, and psychiatry who are building foundational expertise in perinatal mental health. The handbook is appropriate as a graduate-level textbook or supplementary course reading.
Practicing clinicians: including psychologists, therapists, psychiatrists, and clinical social workers who work with pregnant or postpartum patients. The intervention section and psychopathology coverage have direct clinical application.
Educators and supervisors: who train clinicians in perinatal mental health, maternal-child health, or women's health psychology. The handbook provides a research-grounded curriculum foundation.
Perinatal mental health professionals: Across disciplines who want a single authoritative reference that covers the full scope of their clinical and scientific field.
About the Editor
Amy Wenzel, PhD, ABPP, edited the Oxford Handbook of Perinatal Psychology. She is a licensed psychologist and one of the most prolific contributors to the cognitive behavioral therapy literature, with more than seventeen books in print covering CBT theory, technique, and application.
Dr. Wenzel developed Therapeutic Relationship-Focused CBT (TRF-CBT), an approach that integrates the strength of the therapeutic alliance with evidence-based CBT interventions. Her clinical and scholarly work spans perinatal distress, suicide prevention, anxiety, depression, and the application of CBT to complex presentations.
She has held faculty appointments at major research universities, including an affiliation with the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and has contributed to the training of CBT practitioners internationally. Her publications include peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, APA video demonstrations, and the edited volumes listed on this site.
Explore Dr. Wenzel's full biography and clinical background.
The Routledge International Handbook of Perinatal Mental Health Disorders, also edited by Dr. Wenzel, is a related scholarly reference with a clinical and diagnostic focus. View the Routledge Handbook here.
Related Books by Dr. Amy Wenzel
Readers of the Oxford Handbook of Perinatal Psychology often find the following titles useful in combination:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Perinatal Distress: A clinical guide to applying CBT with pregnant and postpartum patients.
Anxiety in Childbearing Women: Focused coverage of anxiety disorders during pregnancy and postpartum.
Coping With Infertility, Miscarriage, and Neonatal Loss: Accessible support for patients and families navigating reproductive loss.
Dropping the Baby and Other Scary Thoughts: A research-based guide to intrusive thoughts in the postpartum period.
The Routledge International Handbook of Perinatal Mental Health Disorders: A companion handbook with clinical and diagnostic depth.
Citation and Publisher Information
Wenzel, A. (Ed.). (2014). The Oxford handbook of perinatal psychology. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199778072.001.0001
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Series: Oxford Library of Psychology
Online ISBN: 9780199984336
Print ISBN: 9780199778072
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199778072.001.0001
A Note on Clinical Services
The Oxford Handbook of Perinatal Psychology reflects the depth of Dr. Wenzel's expertise in evidence-based care for perinatal mental health. If you are a clinician, researcher, or student looking to connect with that expertise directly, you are welcome to reach out through the contact page to learn more about training resources, speaking engagements, or clinical consultation.
