Abstract
BackgroundThe birth of a child entails major changes in a woman’s life. In the perinatal period, the woman is particularly susceptible to emotional problems. The objective of the present paper was to investigate the relationship between global orientation to life and its components on the one hand, and socio-demographic factors on the other, with regard to early postpartum emotional disorders.MethodsThe study included 643 patients hospitalized in obstetric departments in Lublin, Poland, who had had a spontaneous vaginal delivery. Research instruments included: the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), the Orientation to Life Questionnaire (SOC-29), and the authors’ own survey questionnaire to record participants’ characteristics.ResultsThe study findings indicate an association between lower levels of postpartum blues and higher levels of global sense of coherence, as well as a stronger sense of meaningfulness, manageability, and comprehensibility. More severe emotional disorders were found in patients who were single. Postpartum blues symptoms were more intense in less educated respondents.ConclusionsPostpartum emotional disorders are associated with a global sense of coherence and its components. Higher levels of SOC reduce the risk of postpartum blues.
Highlights
The birth of a child entails major changes in a woman’s life
Significant, moderately strong negative correlations were found between postpartum emotional disorder severity and global sense of coherence (p < 0.001), comprehensibility (p < 0.001), manageability (p < 0.001), and meaningfulness (p < 0.001)
This indicates that more severe postpartum emotional disorders are associated with a lower level of global sense of coherence and its components
Summary
The birth of a child entails major changes in a woman’s life. The woman is susceptible to emotional problems. The perinatal period is characterized by a number of concurrent biological, emotional and social changes, which require considerable personal and interpersonal adaptation on the part of the woman. The woman is susceptible to a variety of psychological disorders [1, 2]. The birth of a child is a stressful event which causes major changes in a family’s life [3]. Postpartum depression is a psychological disorder that shares its characteristics with depressive episodes occurring at any other life stage. Tearfulness, fatigue, loss of interest, and low self-esteem may occur as early as the second or third trimester of pregnancy, signaling the risk of postpartum depression.
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