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Screening for perinatal depression and stress: a prospective cohort study

  • Maternal-Fetal Medicine
  • Published:
Archives of Gynecology and Obstetrics Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

There is currently a heightened need for perinatal medical services to timely recognize and accurately meet the psychological needs of pregnant women. Psychological disturbances a mother experiences during pregnancy, such as depression and anxiety, can be later associated with inadequate maternal capacity for antenatal care for herself and the baby, and may lead to subsequent mental health problems later in the mother’s life. Routine prenatal assessment could significantly benefit from being proactively enriched with early prevention mental health screening tools to assess, appropriately manage vulnerable populations, and subsequently implement preventive actions.

Methods

178 pregnant women, under routine prenatal medical assessment, were measured regarding depressive symptomatology and stress, through the use of two validated psychometric tools (the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-14)).

Results

Heightened perceived stress and depressive symptomatology levels were associated with younger maternal age, an obstetrical record of more than one births and a history of abortion. Results additionally showed a connection between the requirement for a psychiatric referral—based on the levels of symptomatology recorded through the psychometric assessment and a clinical interview—and currently running the earlier stages (weeks) of pregnancy.

Conclusion

Our revised proposed prenatal screening protocol for depression and stress suggests an amplified follow-up assessment including all pregnant women scoring high in both depression and in perceived stress, regardless of previous history of prenatal depression or of suicidality, to detect earlier or less manifest expressions of distress during pregnancy, in vulnerable perinatal populations.

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Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, CP. The data are not publicly available due to their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

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Funding

The authors declare that no funds, grants, or other support were received during the preparation of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Second Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Aretaieio Hospital, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, 115 28, Athens, Greece

    Christina Papapetrou, Theodoros Panoskaltsis, Konstantinos Panoulis, Nikos Vlahos & Makarios Eleftheriades

  2. Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Oxford, UK

    Andreas Zouridis

  3. Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Women’s Hospital, University Hospital of Basel, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Anna Eleftheriades

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  1. Christina Papapetrou
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  2. Andreas Zouridis
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  4. Theodoros Panoskaltsis
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  5. Konstantinos Panoulis
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Contributions

CP: protocol design, data collection and management, manuscript writing. AZ: data statistical analysis. A. Eleftherides: data interpretation. TP: critical editing of the article. KP: critical editing of the article. NV: approval for publishing. ME: conception, design and supervision of study, project development, final approval of the version to publish. All of the authors approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christina Papapetrou.

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Conflict of interest

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Ethical approval

This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of Aretaieio Hospital, Athens Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Date: 24-07-2020, No: 242/24-07-2020).

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Papapetrou, C., Zouridis, A., Eleftheriades, A. et al. Screening for perinatal depression and stress: a prospective cohort study. Arch Gynecol Obstet (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00404-023-07306-z

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