Post-partum mental illness in northern Nigeria.

All the major psychotic disorders observed following childbirth in the West also occur among patients in Northern Nigeria. The age at onset of post-partum mental disorder is observed to be lower among Northern than Southern Nigerian women; this, in the authors opinion, is probably because women in Northern Nigeria are generally "given out" to their spouses in early teenage. The study also comments on a probable entity of "pure puerperal psychosis."