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.