Identification of emotional problems in postpartum women by health visitors.

Abstract

One hundred mothers of babies aged under 15 weeks who attended well baby clinics were rated for the presence of emotional disorders by health visitors. These assessments were compared with the mothers' scores on the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), a screening instrument for identifying psychiatric cases in the general population. The results indicate that symptoms of minor psychiatric disorder are a problem for an appreciable number of postpartum women, although the health visitors showed a misclassification rate of roughly 40%. It is suggested that routine screening using the questionnaire at the time of the baby's six week check would both improve the detection rate and also enable the health visitors to give extra support to those mothers who were most in need of it.

Postnatal Emotional Disorders in Nigerian Women

“…A full delivery history (including mode of delivery, sex, and weight of baby) was also obtained at this time, if it had not been obtained during the lying-in period. Also during this assessment, the mothers were invited to complete an adapted questionnaire designed to detect socio-emotional problems in postnatal women (Briscoe, 1985). This questionnaire rates such items like ‘¿ worried whether your baby is normal' and ‘¿ having difficultieswith your husband or boyfriend', on a four-itemscalefrom ‘¿ not at all' to ‘¿ very much'.…”

Profilo economico delle donne nel disagio post-partum. Un'indagine empirica presso l'Ospedale Niguarda di Milano

“…Le neo-mamme, tuttavia, possono sentirsi oppresse e mostrare ambivalenza. La forte ambivalenza porta a un senso di perdita ed eventualmente sfociare in una più rilevante depressione post-partum (Bloch et al 2006;Likierman,2003;Briscoe 1986) 4 . Depressione post-partum e la sua versione più mite cosiddetta "sindrome del terzo giorno" (baby-blues) sono indicatori di un disagio consapevole e razionale rispetto alla decisione di tenere il bambino (Pinker, 2013).…”

The Detection of Psychiatric Cases By Greek Physicians: Report On a Study Carried Out in a Greek Primary Care Setting

“…It is also true of other non-psychiatric physicians (eg. Bridges & Goldberg, 1984;Neilson & Williams, 1980) and non-doctors such as health visitors (Briscoe, 1986). Most of these studies have used questionnnaire based measures to determine psychiatric case status and estimate that the physicians detect between 36% and 61 % of all cases.…”