Post-partum Mental Disorders in an Unselected Sample Frequency of Symptoms and Predisposing Factors

Abstract

A retrospective investigation of post-partum disorders with particular regard to frequency of symptoms and predisposing factors has been carried out. Questionaries exploring symptoms of mental disease and gynaecological aberrations were sent to a representative random sample of delivered women. We found a notably high frequency of post-partum mental symptoms. Over 25 % of the sample had more than six symptoms ; 20% had four to six symptoms. We found no significant correlations between the frequency of mental symptoms and age, civil state and duration of marriage, social status, parity, toxaemia, the course of delivery and puerperium during the in-patient period, nor was there any correlation with the duration of stay in hospital after delivery. Women with earlier spontaneous abortions had significantly more psychiatric symptoms than the rest. Further, we found significant correlations between the frequency of mental symptoms and post-partum gynaecological aberrations, such as disturbances of the post-partum involution process, genital pains, dvspareunia, and dysmenorrhoea. We wish to stress the fact that there was no relation between psychiatric symptoms and length of breast-feeding or lactation trouble. © 1965, British Medical Journal Publishing Group. All rights reserved.