Depressed mood during pregnancy and after childbirth

doi:10.1136/bmj.323.7325.1367

BMJ 2001;323:1367 ( 8 December )

Letters

Depressed mood during pregnancy and after childbirth

Time points for assessing perinatal mood must be optimised

Treatment for depression is important confounding variable

Data do not support idea that depression is more common antenatally than postnatally

Authors' reply

Time points for assessing perinatal mood must be optimised

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ Evans et al studied perinatal mood using the Edinburgh postnatal depression scale.¹ They claim that symptoms ofdepression are not more common or severe after childbirth thanduring pregnancy and that depression during pregnancy is morecommon than postnatal depression. These two findings have potentiallyfar reaching implications, but caution is needed in using thedata to draw theseconclusions.

The Edinburgh postnatal depression scale has been validated for use only in the early postpartum period and predicts depressioncorrectly in most (73%) women with a score above 12.² Analysisof scores below this threshold should be made with care: variabilityof 1-2 points then has not been proved to indicate severity ofdepression. The interpretation of raised mean scores (such as6.72 at 32 weeks of pregnancy compared with 5.84 at 8 weeks postpartum) as indicating more severe depression may then be inaccurate.The difference in mean scores should be considered . . . [Full text of this article]

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Cohort study of depressed mood during pregnancy and after childbirth: Jonathan Evans, Jon Heron, Helen Francomb, Sarah Oke, and Jean Golding
BMJ 2001 323: 257-260. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]