Anxiety symptoms and disorders at eight weeks postpartum
Section snippets
Participants
Birth records for women who delivered infants in Grand Forks, ND and its surrounding communities were obtained from announcements in the area’s major newspaper (n=754) over a nine month period. For women whose contact information was available through public data bases (e.g., telephone books, directory assistance; n=403), a letter describing the study was sent when they were approximately six weeks postpartum, and soon thereafter they were contacted by telephone to inquire about their interest
Rates of postpartum anxiety and depressive disorders
Table 1 displays prevalence rates of anxiety and depressive disorders, prevalence rates of sub-syndromal cases of anxiety and depressive disorders, and the number of participants who endorsed a postpartum onset of their symptoms. Postpartum prevalence rates of these diagnoses were as follows: GAD, 8.2%; OCD, 2.7%; PD, 1.4%; AG, 0%; SOC, 4.1%; PTSD, 0%; MDD, 4.8%; and DYS, 2.7%. One-year prevalence rates of these disorders in women representative of the general population are GAD, 4.3%; OCD,
Discussion
The present study is the first comprehensive investigation of the prevalence of postpartum anxiety disorders in a community sample of women. Results indicated that the rate of postpartum GAD was elevated as compared to the rate that characterizes women in the general population. In addition, between 40 and 50% of the women who were assigned anxiety or depressive disorder diagnoses endorsed a postpartum onset of their symptoms. Comorbid depressive symptoms were particularly common in individuals
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by a University of North Dakota Summer Graduate Research Professorship, a University of North Dakota New Faculty Scholar Award, and a University of North Dakota Faculty Seed Grant. Portions of this research were presented at the 11th Biannual Meeting of the International Conference on Personal Relationships and the 36th Annual Meeting of the Association for Advancement of Behavior Therapy. The authors would like to thank Peter Schmuzter, Jason McCray, Kirsten Robinson,
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Present address: McLean Hospital/Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA.