Review of validation studies of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale

Abstract

Most studies show a high sensitivity of the EPDS. Because of the differences in study design and large confidence intervals, uncertainty remains regarding the comparability between the sensitivity and specificity estimates of the different EPDS versions.

A review of the methodological features of systematic reviews in maternal medicine

“…Majority of the reviews were on hypertensive disorders [8,10,11,17,19-23,31-34,37,48,53,55,58,64,65,69,70], psychiatry [15,27,43,47,50-52,56,57,59,61,74,75], or thromboembolism [26,42,62-66,68]. Even among these commonly addressed areas, a very narrow spectrum of diseases was covered.…”

A cross-sectional study of early identification of postpartum depression: Implications for primary care providers from The Ontario Mother & Infant Survey

“…A recent review of eighteen EPDS validation studies, suggests that when used in a general population such as the sample for TOMIS, the positive predictive value may be less than 50%, emphasizing the need for further clinical assessment of the women who are identified as ≥ 12 [40]. The TOMIS results also suggest that prenatal distress, while important, is an insufficient predictor of postpartum depression [37,38].…”

“…Although the EPDS is most often used at 6 weeks postpartum, it has been used antenatally [38,39] and in the early postnatal period (e.g. day 5) [40]. The EPDS was developed as a screening tool, and is not meant to diagnose postpartum depression.…”

Medical or surgical abortion and psychiatric outcomes

“…EPDS was chosen for the study because it had been validated extensively as a self-report screening tool for post-partum depression and antenatal depression [16][17][18]. The validity of the EPDS was confirmed in non-post-partum patients and a sensitivity of 88% and specificity of 71% were detected with the cut-off level of 10 points [19].…”