Prevalence of Postpartum Depression and Associated Factors among the Postpartum Mothers in Vijayanagar District, Karnataka, India

Postpartum depression is most common public problem which occurs during postpartum period. If it was unrecognized and undiagnosed it may affect the health of the mother. With this present study was designed to study the prevalence of postpartum depression and identify the influence of selected demographic, personal and child factors on postpartum depression. A differential design was used to compare mothers with postpartum depression and mothers without postpartum depression during postpartum period. A convenient sample of 164 postpartum mothers were selected randomly in the Viajayanagar district of Karnataka state. A self- structured interview schedule to elicit the demographic information and personal characteristics about mother and the infant was used. Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) by Cox et al. [1] and Socio-Economic Status (SES) by Aggarwal et al. (2005) were also used for the study. The results of the study revealed that overall prevalence rate postpartum depression was 42.70 per cent (70 out of 164). Mothers between 31 to 35 years had higher odds of risk (OR=3.02, 95%CI =0.1.18, 7.68) of having postpartum depression and mothers between 25 to 30 years had (OR=0.77, 95%CI =0.36, 1.66) 0.77 times risk of having postpartum depression. There was a significant association found between age of the mother and postpartum depression. The factors associated with postpartum depression were age of the mother, mothers age at marriage, number of years of marriage, occupation of the mother, size of the family, gender of the infant, mode of breast feeding and age and birth weight of the child. There is a need to design the suitable intervention programmes to eliminate the such contributory factors which can substantially help to improve the emotional well-being of women in the vulnerable postnatal period.