Screening for Depressive and Anxiety Symptoms During Pregnancy and Postpartum at a Japanese Perinatal Center

BACKGROUND We examined the current status of depressive and anxiety symptoms in Japanese women during pregnancy and postpartum. METHODS We asked 220 Japanese women who gave birth to singleton babies at term to answer the two self-administered questionnaires (Whooley's two questions and two-item generalized anxiety disorder scale) at first, second and third trimester of pregnancy and 1 month after delivery. RESULTS The rates of women with depressive symptoms were common during the first trimester of pregnancy (25%) and the postpartum (17%), while the women with anxiety symptoms were common during the first trimester of pregnancy (36%). Eight percent women had histories of mental disorders, and 95% of them showed depressive and/or anxiety symptoms somewhere during pregnancy. Of the women who had depressive symptoms during postpartum, 86% showed depressive and/or anxiety symptoms somewhere during pregnancy. CONCLUSION Screening for depressive and anxiety symptoms during pregnancy was suggested to be useful to detect high risk women of postpartum depression.