Associations between COVID-19 lockdown and post-lockdown on the mental health of pregnant women, postpartum women and their partners from the Queensland family cohort prospective study

Vicki L Clifton; Sailesh Kumar; Danielle Borg; Kym M Rae; Roslyn N Boyd; Koa Whittingham; Karen Moritz; Hannah E Carter; Steven M McPhail; Brenda Gannon; Robert Ware; Barnaby J W Dixson; Samudragupta Bora; Cameron P Hurst

doi:10.1186/s12884-022-04795-9

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Associations between COVID-19 lockdown and post-lockdown on the mental health of pregnant women, postpartum women and their partners from the Queensland family cohort prospective study

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Associations between COVID-19 lockdown and post-lockdown on the mental health of pregnant women, postpartum women and their partners from the Queensland family cohort prospective study

Vicki L Clifton, Sailesh Kumar, Danielle Borg, Kym M Rae, Roslyn N Boyd, Koa Whittingham, Karen Moritz, Hannah E Carter, Steven M McPhail, Brenda Gannon, …

BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, Vol.22, pp.1-12

2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-022-04795-9

Appears in UniSC Diversity and Inclusion Research Collection

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Abstract

pregnancy

postpartum

mental health

anxiety

depression

stress

COVID-19

UniSC Diversity Area - Life Stages

Background: There are very few developed countries where physical isolation and low community transmission has been reported for COVID-19 but this has been the experience of Australia. The impact of physical isolation combined with low disease transmission on the mental health of pregnant women is currently unknown and there have been no studies examining the psychological experience for partners of pregnant women during lockdown. The aim of the current study was to examine the impact of the first COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020 and post lockdown from August 2020 on the mental health of pregnant women or postpartum women and their partners. Methods: Pregnant women and their partners were prospectively recruited to the study before 24 weeks gestation and completed various questionnaires related to mental health and general wellbeing at 24 weeks gestation and then again at 6 weeks postpartum. The Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) were used as outcome measures for the assessment of mental health in women and DASS-21 was administered to their partners. This analysis encompasses 3 time points where families were recruited; before the pandemic (Aug 2018-Feb 2020), during lockdown (Mar-Aug 2020) and after the first lockdown was over (Sept-Dec 2020). Results: There was no significant effect of COVID-19 lockdown and post lockdown on depression or postnatal depression in women when compared to a pre-COVID-19 subgroup. The odds of pregnant women or postpartum women experiencing severe anxiety was more than halved in women during lockdown relative to women in the pre-COVID-19 period (OR = 0.47; 95%CI: 0.27–0.81; P = 0.006). Following lockdown severe anxiety was comparable to the pre-COVID-19 women. Lockdown did not have any substantial effects on stress scores for pregnant and postpar-tum women. However, a substantial decrease of over 70% in the odds of severe stress was observed post-lockdown

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Title: Associations between COVID-19 lockdown and post-lockdown on the mental health of pregnant women, postpartum women and their partners from the Queensland family cohort prospective study
Authors: Vicki L Clifton (Corresponding Author) - The University of Queensland
Sailesh Kumar (Author) - The University of Queensland
Danielle Borg (Author) - The University of Queensland
Kym M Rae (Author) - The University of Queensland
Roslyn N Boyd (Author) - The University of Queensland
Koa Whittingham (Author) - The University of Queensland
Karen Moritz (Author) - The University of Queensland
Hannah E Carter (Author) - Queensland University of Technology
Steven M McPhail (Author) - Queensland University of Technology
Brenda Gannon (Author) - The University of Queensland
Robert Ware (Author) - Griffith University
Barnaby J W Dixson (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Legacy
Samudragupta Bora (Author) - The University of Queensland
Cameron P Hurst (Author) - Charles Darwin University
Publication details: BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, Vol.22, pp.1-12
Publisher: BioMed Central Ltd.
Date published: 2022
DOI: 10.1186/s12884-022-04795-9
ISSN: 1471-2393
Copyright note: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Organisation Unit: Australian Centre for Pacific Islands Research; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Health - Psychology; School of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Legacy
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99643779002621
Output Type: Journal article

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