| الوصف: |
Objective: Covid-19 infection was first diagnosed in Wuhan, China, and became a pandemic. Afterward, it had a devastating effect on mental and physical health. Postpartum depression (PPD) is a common health problem that needs attention to improve women’s healthcare. Herein, we aim to search for the PPD incidence in the pandemic period. Methods: A prospective cross-sectional study was conducted. A total of 126 pregnant women were included for the study. None of the patients had Covid-19 infection. Inclusion criteria included; women were aged 18 or over and ability to communicate fluently provided informed consent to participate. Women who had late fetal loss and stillbirth or neonatal death were excluded. Patients age, gravida, medical history, previous or ongoing psychological disease, and drug use, alcohol use and smoking, obstetric follow-up regarding any complication for the fetus or mother, socio-economic status, spouse support, sleep disorder, hyperemesis gravidarum, type of delivery, fetal birth weight, height, AGGAR scores 1-5th min, neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admissions were recorded. Postpartum depression diagnosis was evaluated via Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale (EPDS). Patients were grouped into two, group 1 consisted of patients who are at low risk for postpartum depression and group 2 was at high risk for depression according to their EPDS scores. Results: The mean age of the patients was 28.90±5.26 (18-41). 68 (54%) of the patients had vaginal deliveries and 58 (46%) of them had cesarean section. The average weight of newborn babies was 3324±586.11 grams (2750-4950), 1st minute APGAR score was 7.75±0.9 (4-8), 5th minute APGAR score was 8.88±0.45 (7-9). 23 (18.3%) of the newborns were admitted to neonatal intensive care (Table 1). According to the EDPS scores, only 12% of the patients were classified as having high risk group for depression. Lower income, previous psychiatric illness, higher education levels and having newborn needs NICU were found to significantly related to PPD (p = 0.029, p = 0.034, p=0.046 and p = 0.001 respectively) (Table 2). The other parameters were not found to be significantly related to PPD scores. Conclusion: Covid-19 was not found to increase the rate of PPD in short term notice in our center, which was affected seriously. Studies with a higher number of patients and in different regions are necessary to state a precise conclusion. |
