Abstract
Anxiety is a common perinatal disorder that can cause severe adverse consequences. This study (a) assesses the prevalence of maternal postnatal anxious symptomatology, and (b) analyses its association with demographic and socioeconomic variables as well as obstetric and other psychosocial variables. The assessment included 307 mothers aged ≥18 years with a biological baby aged ≤ 52 weeks and from seven Italian healthcare centres, evaluated using a Psychosocial and Clinical Assessment Form (also covering demographic and socioeconomic factors), and the state scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. We found an overall prevalence of self-reported postnatal anxious symptoms of 34.2%. More specifically, the prevalence was 34.5% at 1–24 weeks postpartum, and 30.8% at >24 weeks postpartum. No associations between postnatal anxious symptoms and demographic or socioeconomic variables were observed. As regards the other variables, the findings indicated antenatal depression or anxiety, parity, and current psychological support from the partner as having the strongest relationships.
Highlights
Anxiety is one of the most common postpartum mental disorders [1,2,3]; anxiety is more common than depression, and these two conditions often occur concomitantly [1, 4]
The prevalence of postnatal anxiety found in this study was more than double the overall pooled prevalence of 15.0% and 14.8% (>24 weeks) reported by metaanalytic studies [1]
Differences in the prevalence of maternal postnatal anxiety could be due to (a) particular individual and clinical characteristics of participants and (b) the fact that one of the major reasons for individuals’ refusal to participate in the current study was women feeling that they were in good health and confident that they would not become anxious or depressed
Summary
Anxiety is one of the most common postpartum mental disorders [1,2,3]; anxiety is more common than depression, and these two conditions often occur concomitantly [1, 4]. Postnatal anxiety may impact on mothers’ own well-being and their children’s health and development. For women themselves, these impacts include poorer quality of life and reduction in their abilities to perform daily activities and parenting, increased risk of chronic disease and substance abuse, as well as the economic burden of health care costs, loss of earnings, and unemployment [5]. Postnatal anxiety can negatively affect breastfeeding [6] and early mother–infant interactions [7,8,9,10,11] at a time when children are most sensitive to their environments, resulting in poorer behavioral, cognitive, and emotional development outcomes for children [12,13,14]. The body of literature on the prevalence and risk factors of anxiety from the postpartum period is limited [14]
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