Investigation of the effect of religious doctrines on religious knowledge and attitude and postpartum blues in primiparous women

BACKGROUND Postpartum blues is a transient change of moods occurring in the first few days after delivery. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of religious doctrines on postpartum blues in primiparous women. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this randomized controlled tria1, 84 primiparous women who had average or weak religious attitude were randomly divided into intervention and control groups. In the intervention group, religious doctrines were instructed from 20(th) to 28(th) weeks of gestation through 6 weekly sessions of 60-90 min each. The control group, however, just received the routine care. Spielberger's anxiety scale and the questionnaires assessing religious knowledge and attitude were completed by both groups before, immediately after, and 1-2 months after the intervention. Also, postpartum blues were evaluated by Edinburg Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) 10 days after delivery. Then, the data were analyzed using Chi-square, paired t-test, independent t-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and Pearson correlation coefficient. RESULTS The results showed postpartum blues in 59.5% of the study participants. Besides, the results of independent t-test revealed a statistically significant difference between the two groups regarding the mean score of postpartum blues (P = 0.036). Although the intervention group's knowledge and attitude scores were higher than those of the control group, no significant difference was found between the two groups regarding the correlation coefficient between postpartum blues and religious knowledge (P = 0.088) and religious attitude (P = 0.7). CONCLUSIONS The results of the study show that instruction of religious doctrines was effective in increasing the religious knowledge and attitudes and reducing the postpartum blues.