Prevalence of Postpartum Depression at an Indian Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital

Abstract

Background: The term postpartum depression can be used to characterize all kinds of depressive symptoms after child birth. Every year approximately 10-20% of new mothers were affecting by this disorder. A mother’s ongoing depression can contribute to behavioral, emotional, cognitive and interpersonal problems in later life. Post partum depression which is left untreated may have long term adverse effects. Approximately more than 50% of the post partum depression cases were left unrecognized at present. Hence, in this study, we made an attempt to assess the prevalence of post partum among the post partum women who were interviewed after their recent delivery. Methods: This was a prospective observational study involving post partum women who have delivered a baby recently, were included in the study and they were interviewed after one week of their delivery. Patients who were not willing to participate and patients with other existing psychological disorders were excluded from the study. Data collection was done by using “Hamilton Rating scale for Depression”. Results: A total of 236 postpartum women were screened for depression by using the Hamilton rating scale for depression and about 74(31.4%) were found to be with depression. According to Hamilton’s rating scale for depression, 81.1% of the depressed postpartum women were found to be mildly depressed, 14.9% were found to be moderately depressed, 2.7% were found to be severely depressed and 1.3% were observed to be very severely depressed. According to the age wise categorization majority of the postpartum depressed women were found between the age group of 21 to 25 years (55.4%), followed by the age group 16 to 20 years (24.3%). Based on the severity of depression majority of the postpartum women were of 21-25 years age and most of them were found to be mildly depressed followed by moderately depressed. According to the gravidae wise categorization majority of the postpartum depression women belongs to gavidae-2 (47.3%) followed by gravidae-1 (31.1%). Among 74 depressed postpartum women, 23 (31.1%) were of gravidae-1, 35 (47.3%) were of gravidae-2, 13 (17.7%) were of gravidae-3, 2 (2.7%) were of gravidae-4, and the remaining 1 (0.2%) belongs to gravidae-5. Conclusion: According to our study, the prevalence of postpartum depression was found to be 31.4%. Majority of depressed individuals were of mildly depressed followed by moderately depressed. Most of the depressed individuals belong to multi gravidae due to various reasons that includes still birth, family pressure about the gender of the child, bad relationship with husband and previous miscarriages. In our study very few people were found with co morbidities like anemia, hypertension, diabetes mellitus and hypothyroidism in which the severity of the depression more. Sleep disturbances, work and activity, changes in the appetite and general somatic symptoms were observed to be more common among the postpartum women with depression. It is the responsibility of all the healthcare professionals to rule out the postpartum depression at an early stage which helps the patient in reducing the emotional suffering.