Prevalence of Depression, Anxiety, and Perceived Stress in Postpartum Mexican Women during the COVID-19 Lockdown.

Blanca Vianey Suárez-Rico,Salvador Espino Y Sosa,Otilia Perichart-Perera,Arturo Cardona-Pérez,Mario Solis-Paredes,Addy Cecilia Helguera-Repetto,Enrique Reyes-Muñoz,Carla González-Leyva,Erika Osorio-Valencia,Guadalupe Estrada-Gutierrez,Maribel Sánchez-Martínez,Carolina Rodríguez-Hernández

doi:10.3390/ijerph18094627

Abstract

The COVID-19 lockdown represents a new challenge for mental health researchers and clinical practitioners. This cross-sectional study aimed to investigate the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and perceived stress in postpartum Mexican women. The study included 293, 4–12-week postpartum women over the age of 18. The Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale (EPDS), Trait-State Trait Anxiety Inventory (T-STAI), and Ten Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), which are all questionnaires validated for the Mexican population, were applied using a web-based online survey. Prevalence and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated. The mean ± standard deviation (SD) of the maternal age was 29.9 ± 6.3 years; the EPDS score: 11 ± 6, T-STAI score: 41.7 ± 12.3, and PSS-10 score: 17.1 ± 7. The prevalence (95% CI) of the postpartum depression symptoms was 39.2% (34–45%), trait anxiety symptoms were found among 46.1% (32–43%) of the participants, and moderate and high perceived stress were in 58% (52–64) and 10.9% (7.8–15) of the participants, respectively. The prevalence of depressive symptoms, generalized anxiety, and perceived stress was higher among postpartum Mexican women during the COVID-19 outbreak than before the lockdown. Our findings highlight the importance of monitoring perinatal mental health during pandemics and the need to design effective psychologic interventions for these patients.

Highlights

In December 2019, Wuhan, a city in Hubei Province in China, became the center of the emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by severe acuteInt
The overall prevalence of significant depressive symptoms in our study was about 39.2%, which was higher than the global prevalence of postpartum depression described before the COVID-19 lockdown, which ranged from 14 to 20% among healthy mothers without a prior history of depression [37]; the prevalence found in our study was three times higher than the prevalence reported for North American postpartum women, which is 13% [37]
It is valid to assume that the increase in the prevalence of postpartum depression among these women could be attributable to the COVID-19 lockdown

Summary

Introduction

In December 2019, Wuhan, a city in Hubei Province in China, became the center of the emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which is caused by severe acuteInt. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 4627 respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [1]. The global cumulative number of cases reached 108.2 million with over 2.3 million deaths since the start of the pandemic [2]. In Mexico, the first wave of COVID-19 occurred from March to July 2020, and as of February 2021, there were 2 million cases [3]. According to the national register of COVID-19 in Mexico, there were 31,253 cases of women with pregnancy/puerperium under follow-up due to COVID-19 infection, 33.6% (n = 10,505) had tested positive as of December 2020, of which 205 have died, with a fatality rate of 1.93% and a maternal mortality rate of 10.1 per 100,000 live births.

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