Abstract
Symptoms may be more useful prognostic markers for mental illness than diagnoses. We sought to investigate symptom domains in women with pre-existing severe mental illness (SMI; psychotic and bipolar disorder) as predictors of relapse risk during the perinatal period. Data were obtained from electronic health records of 399 pregnant women with SMI diagnoses from a large south London mental healthcare provider. Symptoms within six domains characteristically associated with SMI (positive, negative, disorganization, mania, depression, and catatonia) recorded in clinical notes 2years before pregnancy were identified with natural language processing algorithms to extract data from text, and associations investigated with hospitalization during pregnancy and 3months postpartum. Seventy-six women (19%) relapsed during pregnancy and 107 (27%) relapsed postpartum. After adjusting for covariates, disorganization symptoms showed a positive association at borderline significance with relapse during pregnancy (adjusted odds ratio [aOR]=1.36; 95% confidence interval [CI]=0.99-1.87 per unit increase in number of symptoms) and depressive symptoms negatively with relapse postpartum (0.78; 0.62-0.98). Restricting the sample to women with at least one recorded symptom in any given domain, higher disorganization (1.84; 1.22-2.76), positive (1.50; 1.07-2.11), and manic (1.48; 1.03-2.11) symptoms were associated with relapse during pregnancy, and disorganization (1.54; 1.08-2.20) symptom domains were associated with relapse postpartum. Positive, disorganization, and manic symptoms recorded in the 2years before pregnancy were associated with increased risk of relapse during pregnancy and postpartum. The characterization of routine health records from text fields is relatively transferrable and could help inform predictive risk modelling.
Highlights
Severe mental illness (SMI) includes psychotic and bipolar disorders
Considering diagnoses at the beginning of pregnancy: 145 (36.3%) had a diagnosis of bipolar affective disorder or mania, 28.1% had a diagnosis of schizophrenia, 11.8% acute and transient psychosis, 11.0% psychotic depression, 6.5% schizoaffective disorder, 4.5% psychosis not otherwise specified, and 1.8% had a history of puerperal psychosis only
In a relatively large sample of women with severe mental illness (SMI) diagnoses drawn from a mental healthcare data resource, we sought to investigate the levels of recorded symptoms across different mental health domains in the 2 years before pregnancy and their associations with relapse in pregnancy and/or postpartum
Summary
Severe mental illness (SMI) includes psychotic and bipolar disorders. Research into relapse of SMI perinatally has primarily focused on bipolar disorder and/or psychosis postpartum, with risk estimates ranging from 17 to 47% [1,2,3,4]. We sought to investigate symptom domains in women with pre-existing severe mental illness (SMI; psychotic and bipolar disorder) as predictors of relapse risk during the perinatal period. Symptoms within six domains characteristically associated with SMI (positive, negative, disorganization, mania, depression, and catatonia) recorded in clinical notes 2 years before pregnancy were identified with natural language processing algorithms to extract data from text, and associations investigated with hospitalization during pregnancy and 3 months postpartum. Disorganization, and manic symptoms recorded in the 2 years before pregnancy were associated with increased risk of relapse during pregnancy and postpartum. The characterization of routine health records from text fields is relatively transferrable and could help inform predictive risk modelling
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