Screening of postpartum depression among new mothers in Istanbul: a psychometric evaluation of the Turkish Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale

OBJECTIVE: This study is the first concerted effort to ascertain factor structure of EPDS using evidence based analytical techniques. It is the most widely used scale for assessing postpartum depression in Turkey, and yet no investigations have been conducted to assess it factor structure. This study was conducted from April 2012 to April 2018 at the Marmara University Hospital operating under the name of Marmara University Pendik Training and Research Hospital in Istanbul Turkey. RESULTS: A total of 1700 women were included in this study, who responded to the EPDS, in addition to demographic characteristics and well-being of their offspring. A total of 1615 mothers provided adequate data for inclusion in analysis. Standardized Chronbach’s alpha for EPDS was 0.81 with corrected item-total correlations ranging from 0.35 to 0.62. Parallel analysis, MAP Velicer Test and Hull’s method dictated retaining of one factor structure. All the items revealed adequate communalities (> 0.20) except item 2 (enjoyment) and item 10 (self-harm). Their communalities were 0.16 and 0.19, however, these items were not dropped. All of the items yielded moderate to strong factor loadings. Minimum factor loading was for item 2 (0.40) and highest for item 8 (0.71).