Relationship between personality and postpartum depression in Spanish pregnant
Supporting Agencies
- Fondo de Investigaciones Sanitarias
- Instituto Carlos III
Abstract
The aim of this study was to analyze the influence of personality factors in postnatal depression. A prospective ex post facto design was carried out. The sample consisted of 116 women, recruited in their first trimester of pregnancy and followed up until four months postpartum. The instruments used were the Edinburg Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) to assess postpartum depression and the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI) to analyze personality traits. Socio-demographic variables (age, parity, educational level, employment status, and planning of pregnancy) and clinical variables (neonatal Apgar score and mode of delivery) were also taken into account. We performed a regression analysis observing that neuroticism was the only factor that predicted depressive symptoms, explaining 23.8% of the variance. We found no interaction effect of sociodemographic or clinical variables. Neuroticism significantly influences psychological health, in life events such as motherhood. Due to its stable condition, personality could be assessed from the beginning of pregnancy, contributing to the care of pregnant women with high scores in neuroticism, to prevent, detect and treat early postnatal depression.
Downloads
The works published in this journal are subject to the following terms:
1. The Publications Service of the University of Murcia (the publisher) retains the property rights (copyright) of published works, and encourages and enables the reuse of the same under the license specified in paragraph 2.
© Servicio de Publicaciones, Universidad de Murcia, 2022
2. The works are published in the online edition of the journal under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento-CompartirIgual 4.0 (legal text). You can copy, use, distribute, transmit and publicly display, provided that: i) you cite the author and the original source of publication (journal, editorial and URL of the work), ii) are not used for commercial purposes, iii ) mentions the existence and specifications of this license.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
3. Conditions of self-archiving. Is allowed and encouraged the authors to disseminate electronically pre-print versions (version before being evaluated and sent to the journal) and / or post-print (version reviewed and accepted for publication) of their works before publication, as it encourages its earliest circulation and diffusion and thus a possible increase in its citation and scope between the academic community. RoMEO Color: Green.
