This chapter is an essential guide to recognising and treating ADHD in the perinatal period, an increasingly common scenario which specialist community and inpatient perinatal services face. We explore issues specific to assessing and treating women with ADHD. The features of how the disorder is classified are discussed, including information on how ADHD may present differently in women. The challenges of identifying ADHD in females are considered along with common comorbidities. A summary of guidance on treating this disorder in adults is included, with information on pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatment options. An outline of the essential investigations required before initiating medication for a woman is provided, along with details on the necessary ongoing physical health monitoring. Both stimulant and non-stimulant medicines are discussed with details on the various formulations available in the UK and practical tips on prescribing in the perinatal period. Specific issues to explore at follow-up are outlined. Special consideration is given to recognising and treating ADHD in the perinatal period. This includes during the pre-conceptual period, prescribing in pregnancy and the postnatal period including breastfeeding. The impact of ADHD on parenting is also considered. This is essential reading on a commonly misunderstood disorder for all perinatal clinicians.

Mothers who kill their own children are unusual women whose offences often elicit fear, horror and condemnation in others. Psychiatrists may be asked to assess such women to explore the relationship between the offence and maternal mental illness, and the potential risk to other children. In this chapter, I discuss some available data on mothers who kill, in terms of criminal justice statistics, and review accounts of motives for such killings. I briefly discuss the legal processes that mother who kill must face, and the role of the psychiatrist. I then discuss some recent research about the role of maternal attachment security in relation to attitudes towards children and the transition to motherhood and the potential for psychological disorder that arise during that transition. I also comment on social factors, such as the role of partners and fathers. I conclude with some discussion about the management of cases where mental illness is a risk factor for filicide, and the associated child protection issues that may arise in such cases.

This chapter contains an outline of fetal development, describing general organogenesis in the first trimester, and then brain development in the second and third trimesters. The effects of maternal well-being, therapeutic medication, tobacco and alcohol on the developing fetus are explored. Finally, the current format of antenatal care, screening and fetal medicine in the UK National Health Service is described. There is a glossary of common conditions that are diagnosed antenatally, which are not specific to women who take prescribed or recreational drugs. The majority of such women have normal pregnancies and give birth to healthy babies at term.

Justo Arosemena (1817–1896), better known today as the “father of Panamanian nationalism,” was one of the most notable constitutionalist jurists in nineteenth-century Spanish America. In 1855, Arosemena published El Estado Federal de Panamá at a time when New Granada (Colombia today), of which Panama was part, was following a radical federalist trajectory – that year, he was elected as the first president of the Federal State of Panama. As a leading figure from one of the nine states that formed the Estados Unidos de Colombia in 1863, Arosemena’s voice carried weight. In the following years, he was appointed to several diplomatic posts to represent Colombia in the United States and in other Latin American countries. His credentials as a constitutionalist of hemispheric dimensions were marked by the publication of his Constituciones políticas de la América Meridional (1870), expanded and reedited in 1878 as Estudios constitucionales sobre los gobiernos de América Latina, from which we have selected the passages for our volume.

Lucas Alamán (1792–1853) was a Mexican intellectual and statesman born in Guanajuato, where he witnessed the massacre of Spaniards during Miguel Hidalgo’s revolt in 1810, an event that would forever mark his conservative thinking. He studied at the Colegio de Minas in Mexico City, continuing his education in Freiburg and Göttingen. Alamán occupied several government positions, most importantly at the Ministry of Foreign Relations, until his death in 1853. He was the author of the Disertaciones sobre la historia de la República Mexicana, from which the editors have taken the current selections, and Historia de México desde los primeros movimientos que prepararon la Independencia en el año de 1808 hasta la época presente (1849–1852).