The Relationship Between Social Support and Postpartum Depression in Mothers with Premature Babies

Abstract

Introduction: Failure in social support is one of the important factors in developing postpartum depression. Since mothers with premature or sick babies have higher levels of anxiety during postpartum period in comparison with other members, they need more social support. So, in this study we decided to evaluate the relation between postpartum depression and the level of social support in mothers who have premature newborns.
 Methods: This descriptive-correlative study was conducted on 100 mothers who had premature newborns and were discharged from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit of Shahid Sadoughi Hospital in 2016. The sampling was conducted using the available sampling method. Mothers were asked to complete the social support and postpartum depression questionnaire. . All collected data were entered to the SPSS v.17 and analyzed by the analytic and descriptive statistical indices. The significance level was set at p-value<0.05.
 Results: The final results revealed that social support had a significant association (p-value<0.05) with the number of mother’s child, her husband’s job, and family economic status . Furthermore, the findings revealed that postpartum depression had a significant association with the father's job, the educational status of father, and the economic status of family.
 Conclusion: It can be concluded that the more social support leds to the less incidence of postpartum depression.