Intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors in postpartum women: Psychometric properties of the Parental Thoughts and Behaviors Checklist

Abstract

Validated measures to assess intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors in postpartum women are few. In the present study, we investigated the psychometric properties of such a measure – a self-report version of the Parental Thoughts and Behaviors Checklist (PTBC). Via an online survey platform, 488 women who had given birth during the last year completed the PTBC along with measures of general obsessive-compulsive symptoms, depression, anxiety, parental stress and quality of life. Scores on the PTBC and its subscales showed good to excellent internal consistency, correlated in the expected direction with the other measures in the study, and discriminated between women with and without a history of OCD. Finally, exploratory factor analyses yielded nine thematic factors of intrusive thoughts and compulsive behaviors which largely corresponded to the themes identified by the developers of the interview-based version of the PTBC. This self-report version of the PTBC was found to possess good psychometric properties and to have a factor structure that largely overlapped with the structure of the interview-based version. Further evaluation of this version is needed, but the measure holds promise as a tool that may aid in the assessment of postpartum OCD in primary care and in psychiatric settings.