Predicting the Pregnancy Anxiety in pregnant women basing on Cognitive Biases and Emotion Regulation strategies

Introduction: pregnancy anxiety is associated with adverse health outcomes for the mother and the infant. Considering the importance of this issue, the present study aimed to predict pregnancy anxiety in pregnant women based on cognitive bias and emotion regulation. Methods: This study was a descriptive from correlational type. The statistical population of this study was all pregnant women referred to Ardabil health care centers in 2017 to receive prenatal care from the 1st to the 9th month of pregnancy. A total of 180 individuals were selected by stratified randomly sampling method. All of them completed the demographic questionnaire, pregnancy anxiety-short form questionnaire, cognitive bias scale and emotional regulation scale. Data were analyzed with using SPSS-22 and by Pearson correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis. Results: The findings showed that pregnancy anxiety has positive relationship with cognitive biases (P<0/01; r=0/68). Also, pregnancy anxiety has negative relationship with cognitive reappraisal (P<0/01; r= -0/75) and positive relationship with expressive suppression (P<0/01; r= 0/49) as a components of emotion regulation. The results of regression analysis also indicated that 50% of the total variance of pregnancy anxiety is explained by cognitive bias and 58% of it explained by emotion regulation. Conclusion: The results showed that cognitive biases and emotional regulation strategy are important predictors of pregnancy anxiety. Therefore counselors and therapists should pay attention to the symptoms of women with pregnancy anxiety and based on them, design and implement cognitive and emotional strategies in their curriculum to reduce pregnancy anxiety.