Prevalence of positive depression screen among post miscarriage women- A cross sectional study

Abstract

BackgroundMiscarriages are a common pregnancy complication affecting about 10–15% of pregnancies. Miscarriages may be associated with a myriad of psychiatric morbidity at various timelines after the event. Depression has been shown to affect about 10–20% of all women following a miscarriage. However, no data exists in the local setting informing on the prevalence of post-miscarriage depression. We set out to determine the prevalence of positive depression screen among women who have experienced a miscarriage at the Aga Khan University hospital, Nairobi.MethodsThe study was cross-sectional in design. Patients who had a miscarriage were recruited at the post-miscarriage clinic review at the gynecology clinics at Aga Khan University Hospital, Nairobi. The Edinburgh postpartum depression scale was used to screen for depression in the patients. Prevalence was calculated from the percentage of patients achieving the cut –off score of 13 over the total number of patients.ResultsA total of 182 patients were recruited for the study. The prevalence of positive depression screen was 34.1% since 62 of the 182 patients had a positive depression screen. Moreover, of the patients who had a positive depression screen, 21(33.1%) had thoughts of self-harm.ConclusionA positive depression screen is present in 34.1% of women in our population two weeks after a miscarriage. Thoughts of self-harm are present in about a third of these women (33.1%) hence pointing out the importance of screening these women using the EPDS after a miscarriage.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12888-018-1619-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Factors associated with a positive depression screen after a miscarriage

“…The patients were recruited from the outpatient gynecological clinics at the AKUH. The prevalence for positive depression screen in post miscarriage patients from the present study is estimated at 34.1% as reported in the other paper in this series [8].…”

“…The prevalence of depression after a miscarriage seems to be the most common of these with rates of 10–20% being reported in literature [6, 7]. Furthermore, in the first publication of this series, we described a high positive screen for depression after miscarriage in our population of 34.1% [8].…”

“…Miscarriages being common in early pregnancy there is growing concern about their mental health implications and hence a budding area of research in obstetrics. The present study was the second part of a study that looked at the prevalence of positive depression screen after a miscarriage [8], and set out to look at the factors that influence this occurrence.…”

“…The sample size used was for the prevalence study [8] which the present study forms the second part. We estimated the prevalence of post miscarriage depression occurs in 10–20% of women from published literature [13] .…”

Risk of post-traumatic stress disorder in women after miscarriage

“…Above all, however, miscarriage is seen as a loss event, as a consequence of which most studies focus mainly on the risk of depression after this event. It has been reported that 30-55% of severe depression develops within 6 months after the miscarriage [2,[11][12][13][14][15][16]. However, pregnancy loss may also involve traumatic elements, even leading to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) [5,15,[17][18][19][20][21].…”