Social Support—A Protective Factor for Depressed Perinatal Women?

Jeannette Milgrom, Yafit Hirshler, John Reece, Charlene Holt and Alan W. Gemmill
Additional contact information
Jeannette Milgrom: Parent-Infant Research Institute, Heidelberg West, Victoria 3081, Australia
Yafit Hirshler: Parent-Infant Research Institute, Heidelberg West, Victoria 3081, Australia
John Reece: School of Psychological Sciences, Australian College of Applied Psychology, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia
Charlene Holt: Parent-Infant Research Institute, Heidelberg West, Victoria 3081, Australia
Alan W. Gemmill: Parent-Infant Research Institute, Heidelberg West, Victoria 3081, Australia

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 8, 1-17

Abstract: Social support before and after childbirth is a possible protective factor for perinatal depression. Currently, there is a lack of longitudinal studies beyond the first year postpartum exploring the relationship of social support with depression and anxiety. Social support is also a possible protective factor for adverse child development, which is a known consequence of perinatal depression. The present study followed up a cohort of depressed women ( n = 54) from a randomised controlled trial of psychological treatment for antenatal depression. We examined the trajectory of the relationships between perceived social support (Social Provisions Scale), depression (Beck Depression Inventory), and anxiety (Beck Anxiety Inventory) twice in pregnancy and twice postpartum up to two years. The influence of social support on child development and parenting-related stress was also explored. Two aspects of social support, Reassurance of Worth and Reliable Alliance, were strongly related to perinatal depression and anxiety, particularly when predicting symptoms in late pregnancy. However, the effect of postnatal depression on child development at 9 and 24 months post-birth was not mediated by social support. These results suggest the importance of adjusting current interventions for depressed perinatal women to focus on social support in late pregnancy and the first six months postpartum.

Keywords: antenatal depression; antenatal anxiety; postnatal depression; postnatal anxiety; parenting stress; social support; child development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/8/1426/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/8/1426/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:8:p:1426-:d:224764

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().