An example of cross-cultural measurement of psychological symptoms in post-partum mothers.

As one of the components of a longitudinal study of the use made of child health services by mothers resident in Tower Hamlets an attempt was made to assess psychiatric morbidity across cultures using three measures, Goldberg's General Health Questionnaire, the interviewer's assessment of distress and the mothers' own opinion; and secondly to see whether mothers from varying cultures differ from the indigenous population in the psychological symptoms they experienced in the year following their infants' birth. There was a reasonable agreement between the three measures suggesting that it is possible to compare psychiatric morbidity across cultures; in addition there seemed to be little difference in the psychological symptoms experienced in the year following their infant's birth by mothers in the varying cultures.