A Comparison of Postpartum Depression among Low-risk-pregnant Women with Emotion- and Problem-focused Coping Strategies

Postpartum depression is one of most important health problems in women. This study was performed with the purpose of comparing the frequency of postpartum depression in pregnant women with emotion and problem-focused coping strategies.

This study was conducted as a prospective cohort study on 200 pregnant women with stress (low and high levels). The samples were pregnant women referred to all health-treatment, centers of Ardabil, which were selected using a multi-stage sampling method; and according to coping strategy, they were divided into two groups: emotion-focused and problem-focused. Low-risk pregnant women completed questionnaires about demographic characteristics, perceived stress, and Billings and Moos coping strategies in the 38th to 42th week of their pregnancy, and completed the Edinburgh depression scale in the 3th to 4th weeks after childbirth. Data were analyzed using chi 2 and t tests. p<0.05 considered significant.

In this study, 170 participant women (85%) used emotion-focused strategy and 30 women (15%) used problem-focused strategy. Frequency of postpartum depression was 6.7% in the problem-focused group and 8.2% in the emotion-focused group. There was no significant difference in the frequency of postpartum depression between women with the problem- and emotion-focused strategies. Relative risk for postpartum depression was 1.2 times more among the women used emotion-focused strategy than women used problem-focused strategy (p<0.05).

According to the results of this study, there was no significant relationship between postpartum depression and the two emotion-focused and problem-focused coping strategies. This can be due to high influence of postpartum specific endocrine factors in the etiology of this type of depression compared to other depressions.