Abstract
The present study was performed in order to clarify the characteristics and etiological factors of the maternity blues syndrome. This syndrome was diagnosed by means of a questionnaire and interviews on the fifth day postpartum. This syndrome was investigated in terms of psychological, obstetrical, environmental, and endocrinical background.
The results obtained were as follows:
1) About 8% of the women in our study experienced this syndrome in the first five days after childbirth. As most of the blues subjects had felt much better within a month after birth, the syndrome was considered to be of a temporary nature.
2) As for the symptoms themselves, not only psychological complaints, but somatic complaints were characteristic.
3) This syndrome was associated etiologically with a tendency toward neurosis, a cluster of obstetrical variables including older delivery age, primipara, evidence of pregnancy complications, an abnormal mode of delivery and the nuclear family.
4) Multiple regression analysis showed that psychological and obstetrical factors accounted for at least 15% in depression scores following childbirth.
5) It was suggested that self-limiting components played an important role in its onset.
6) As to the endocrinical aspect, in the blues subjects that were both younger than twenty-five years old and primiparous, the serum DHEA-S level on the fifth day postpartum showed a significant increase compared with the control. Therefore, it was suggested that DHEA-S dynamics played a major part in the occurrence of this syndrome.
