2022 Volume 58 Issue 1 Pages 83-87
Postpartum depression has an incidence of 10-15％, and it is important to screen at the 1-month postnatal examination. One of the screening tools is the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Questionnaire（EPDS）. In Nara Prefecture, the first Japanese patient infected with coronavirus infection（COVID-19）was confirmed on January 28, 2020. After the COVID-19 epidemic, our hospital has limitation on visits and attending deliveries, which may be a mental burden on maternity women. In this study, we defined women who delivered at our hospital after the COVID-19 epidemic from January 28 to December 31 2020 as a study group, and women who delivered at the same period in 2019 as a control group. The EPDS values at the time of postnatal medical examination were compared. There were 920 women in the control group and 720 in the study group. The average EPDS values were 3.9 ± 3.9 and 3.9 ± 4.1, respectively, and there was no significant difference between two groups. We analyzed the factors that contributed to the mental load of postpartum women with EPDS of 9 points or more from medical records, but there was no significant difference. The reason for that there was no significant difference in EPDS may be the possibility that the maternity women were able to adapt to the COVID-19 epidemic situation and we and our medical staff provided the appropriate mental support.
