Objective To explore the development track and research focus of perinatal depression.

Methods The 15569 literatures related to perinatal depression were selected from the Web of Science (WOS), and visualized by CiteSpace software.

Results The number of annual publications in this field has increased year by year from 1994 to 2023, and close cooperation between countries/institutions has formed a global cooperation network with the US and the UK at the core. The US, the UK, Canada and Australia are the top four countries in terms of paper production, as well as the countries with high producing institutions and high producing authors.The flow of knowledge in this field is characterized by the multidisciplinary intersection of medicine, psychology and molecular biology. After the initial exploration, the development of postpartum depression, prenatal depression, and perinatal affective disorder, the field has formed five specific research directions: high risk factors of perinatal depression, drug treatment of perinatal depression, screening of perinatal depression, harm of perinatal depression, and epidemiology of perinatal depression in low-income countries. Screening for perinatal depression and the impact of the emerging infectious diseases on the mental health of perinatal women are the current research frontiers in this field.

Conclusion Perinatal depression has always been the hot spot of the global research, perinatal depression research after years of development has been made “quantity” and “qualitative” double breakthrough. In the future, how to better implement the perinatal depression screening policy, is of great significance to the prevention of maternal mental health problems.