Abstract submitted for Professor K.C. Dube Poster Session Award I in ANCIPS 2022: Challenges of Pregnancy: The Body, Mind and Sleep

BACKGROUND: Depression during pregnancy is not a serious health problem for women only, but also for the unborn. Pregnant women are easily affected by sleep disruption, deprivation and sleep disorders. It appears that the sleep patterns may be predictive of depressive symptomatology. During pregnancy and postpartum, women’s dissatisfaction with their bodies also increases irrespective of how satisfied they were prior to the pregnancy. AIMS & OBJECTIVES: To study the sleep quality, prevalence of depression and body image disturbances, correlation of depression with sleep quality & body image disturbances in pregnant women. MATERIALS & METHODS: 146 pregnant females attending the ANC OPD of a tertiary care hospital in the age group of 18-45 years and who did not have any co-morbid psychiatric or major medical/surgical illness were assessed for prevalence of depression and body image disturbances using Becks Depression Inventory (BDI) & Body Image Concern Inventory (BICI) respectively. The sleep quality was assessed by Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PQSI) in the same. RESULTS: Out of 146 patients, 33 patients (22.60%) had depression with mean total BDI score of 8.67 and standard deviation 14.04. Out of 146, 68 were normal, 45 were having mild mood disturbance, 11 were borderline clinical depression, 5 were moderate depression, 9 were severe depression and 8 were having extreme depression. Prevalence of poor sleep quality was 46.57% with mean total PSQI score of 5.34 and standard deviation 3.44, majority of which had insomnia in the form of difficulty initiating and maintaining sleep with frequent awakenings at night. There was an extremely significant positive correlation between depression and poor sleep quality with correlation coefficient r = 0.6752, p value <0.0001. Only 4 out of 146 patients (2.73%) had body image disturbances with mean total BICI score of 23.15 and standard deviation 10.43.There was a significant positive correlation between body image disturbances and depression with correlation coefficient r = 0.1854, p value is 0.00251. CONCLUSION: Depression along with poor sleep quality during pregnancy is prevalent among pregnant women and screening for depression should be a part of the routine during antenatal check-ups so that women in need of interventions can be detected and treated early, thereby preventing adverse outcomes.