• Korean Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.124-133
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• 1999

Objective : Postpartum depression(PPD) was known to be caused by many factors including various psychosocial risk factors. This study was performed to identify the psychosocial risk factors for ppd, preliminarily in Korea. Methods : A group of 119 postpartum women, each of whom was at 6 to 8 weeks after delivery was identified at the time when they visited to the child health clinic or postnatal check-up clinic. The risk factors were surveyed by the self-reported questionnaire. The items of questionnaire were consisted of known risk factors in other studies and other possible stress-related factors. PPD was assessed by the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale(EPDS) and the degree of postpartum depression was determined by its score. Results : 16 women(13.45%) in the high risk group were diagnosed as PPD among the 119 women. Risk factors including past experience of depressive symptoms and low level of marital satisfaction were founded more frequently in women in the high risk group than in the low risk group. The score of EPDS was significantly high in the group who experienced depressive symptoms in the past, anxiety or depression during pregnancy, stressful life event during the period of recent pregnancy and postpartum, and who had low level of marital satisfaction. There was a positive correlation between age and the score of EPDS. However, the postpartum depressive symptoms were not influenced by the level of education, job, retirement due to pregnancy and delivery, wanted or unwanted pregnancy, delivery method, feeding method, the hospitalization of infant, expected and real gender of infant. Conclusion : These results suggest that PPD is quite frequent at postpartum period. Various risk factors contribute to the development of PPD. If clinicians pay attention to the risk factors of PPD and give appropriate psychiatric intervention to the mothers during pregnancy and postpartum, it will be easy for the clinicians to recognize and treat PPD in the early stage.