The cross-sectional logistic regression reported here was undertaken as part of a multilevel mixed method theory building study in a large Sydney multicultural population. Our findings were consistent with previous individual level risk factor studies with: financial difficulties, lack of emotional support, maternal expectations of motherhood, maternal self-reported health, infant temperament, and lack of social support, sole parenthood, and maternal migration being predictors of self-reported depressive symptoms. The prevalence of EPDS >9 (16.9%) and >12 (7.7%) at a mean postpartum age of 3.7 weeks was similar to other New South Wales studies [24]. In addition, the predictors identified here were consistent with thematic concepts emerging from the qualitative arm of our study including: loss of expectations and dreams, marginalisation and “being alone”, lack of support and nurturing, and loss of power and control.
Social support
Our study confirmed a strong association between lack of support and maternal depressive symptoms. “Social support” has been broadly defined as “resources provided by others” and as “the emotional, instrumental, or financial aid” that is obtained from one’s social relationships [25]. Sources of support can be a spouse, relatives, friends, or associates and there are different types of social support, e.g., informational support (where advice and guidance is given), instrumental support (practical help in terms of material aid or assistance with tasks), and emotional support (being a confidant, expressions of caring and esteem). In our study the following measures, where support may have played a role, were significant in the unadjusted analysis: mother not born in Australia, sole parenthood, duration living in the suburb, having regret leaving the suburb, size of social network and access to emotional and practical support. Sole parenthood, mother not born in Australia, lack of a social support network and lack of emotional support remained significant in the final parsimonious models. The measure of emotional support was strongly associated in the final models. The strength of the association with emotional support is surprising given that 91% of mothers reported having a partner. Relationship difficulties have previously been reported to be strongly associated with postnatal depression and the measure of emotional support used here may have been measuring relationship difficulties.
Social support has consistently been found to be associated with perinatal depressive symptoms. In her most recent systematic review of predictors of postnatal depression Beck [13] identified 27 studies that examined social support. The relationship between social support and postpartum depression had a moderate effect size. Studies have also consistently shown a negative correlation between postpartum depression and lack of emotional and instrumental support [13].
Not born in Australia
Our finding of increased depression among mothers not born in Australia is consistent with the protective effective of social support networks. Immigrants can face increased stressors related to discrimination or the stress of adjusting to a new culture. Social support might be particularly relevant in that context. Perinatal depression has been found to be more common among recent migrants to Australia [26]. Small and colleagues found that the rates were high among Turkish women but relatively low among Vietnamese and Filipino women [27]. Of direct relevance to this study are the findings of Stuchbery and colleagues [28] who undertook a study of Vietnamese, Arabic-speaking and Anglo-Celtic mothers in South West Sydney specifically to examine which deficits in their social support network were associated with postnatal depression. For Anglo-Celtic women, low postnatal mood was associated with a perceived need for more emotional support from partners and mothers, and for Vietnamese mother’s low mood was associated with poor quality relationship with the partner and a perceived need for more practical support from him. For Arabic-speaking women, low mood was associated with a perceived need for more emotional support from partners.
Maternal expectations
Our survey included the question “is being a mother what you expected?” which was coded on a five point Likert scale. The strong association in this analysis of maternal expectations with depressive symptoms is consistent with previous studies where this has been examined. Beck’s metasynthesis of 18 qualitative studies of postpartum depression which identified “incongruity between expectations and the reality of motherhood” as one of four perspectives of postnatal depression [29]. The finding is also consistent with the findings of our qualitative study. We have not reported here on the relationship between maternal expectations and other covariates such as infant temperament. It is plausible that maternal expectations affect the mothers’ perception of her infants’ temperament or it may influence her response to her infant’s needs.
Infant temperament
We found strong associations among various measures of infant behaviour and maternal depressive symptoms. The baby having difficulty sleeping, and being demanding, remained significant in the final models for both EPDS >9 and >12. These findings may be related to direct and interactive effects of: 1) the impact of maternal stress and mood on the infant, 2) the impact of the infant’s behaviour on the mother, and 3) mothers perception of her infant’s behaviour. While antenatal stress and depression have been shown to have an impact on infant behaviour and attachment [30], our concurrent qualitative research suggested that, at least as perceived by the mother, poor infant sleeping was a cause of maternal stress and depression. During the causal preparation of DAGs we therefore elected to include the infant temperament variables in the logistic regression.
Beck, in her 2001 systematic review found that infant temperament was moderately related to postpartum depression. The mean r effect size ranged from .33 to .34 [13]. This finding was consistent with her earlier systematic review [31]. Murray et al. [32] followed a group of women from the third trimester of pregnancy until the infant’s second birthday. When the infants were 10 days old they tested for infant irritability and maternal depressive symptoms. Mothers with depressive symptoms were dropped from the study and the remaining mothers assessed again at 6, 8 and 18 weeks. Neonatal irritability was the best predictor of the mothers developing depression in a group of women who were at high risk of developing postnatal depression. Infant irritability was not a risk factor among low risk mothers [32]. In our study the direction of the association remains uncertain. It is certainly plausible that in the absence of support mothers will be more sleep deprived than with good support. Infants are so finely tuned to maternal mood that irritability will develop if they are not generously soothed.
Financial stress
Our study found associations of depressive symptoms with several measures of poverty and social exclusion including: financial difficulties, accommodation, father’s unemployment, sole parenthood and access to a car. Self-reported financial difficulties remained significant in both the final models and sole parenthood in the final EPDS >12 model. This association of financial difficulties with postnatal depressive symptoms has been found in previous studies [33, 34]. Beck did not find SES to be significant in her first meta-analysis [31] but added both SES and unplanned pregnancy in her update [13]. The relationship between SES and postpartum depression, in the 2001 published meta-analysis, was in the range of a small effect size (0.19 ~ 0.22). There is increasing evidence for contextual effects of area-level economic deprivation on mental health [35, 36]. A qualitative study of pathways from neighbourhoods to mental well-being found that neighbourhood affordability, negative community factors including crime and vandalism, and social makeup including unemployment and poverty, were felt to be associated with poor mental well-being [37].
Maternal self-reported health
In our study mothers were asked “in general how would you rate your own health?” This was a five-point Likert scale. Maternal self-rated health was strongly associated with depressive symptoms and remained significant in both the main effects models. Self-rated health is interpreted as a global measure of health and well-being [38]. A study of new mothers in Sweden found factors associated with poor self-rated health included tiredness, musculoskeletal problems, abdominal pain, emotional problems, depression, negative experiences of breast feeding, infant sleeping problems, prematurity and poor social support [39]. Postnatal depression has previously been found to be associated with poor self-rated health [40]. It is also possible that poor self-rated health is related to the feeling of “loss of control” and to birth-related trauma and stress.
Methodological issues
The size (15,389) of this cross-sectional study of the EPDS administered to postnatal women is unique. There have been few previous reports of postnatal depression studies on population samples of this order. Ferguson et al. [12] interviewed 9,316. Most other large studies have been of samples less than 3,000 women [41–46]. The prevalence of EPDS score >9 (16.9%) and >12 (7.7%) is similar to that found in other studies [24, 47]
The cross-sectional design of this study has limitations in relation to drawing inferences from the regularities observed. The direction of the relation cannot be established in cross-sectional quantitative studies. Criteria for inferring a causal relationship in such situations include those proposed by Hill [48]. Cross-sectional quantitative studies are also unable to identify the course of disease or symptoms over time. It could be that the disease was caused by some prior event not captured in the cross-sectional design. Maternal depression may have existed prior to the pregnancy and be unrelated to the regularities observed. The study used secondary data sources and the independent variables available for study were limited to those included in the IBIS self-report survey. Consequently we were unable to report on important variables that might have been included if the survey had been specifically designed for the study of perinatal and postpartum depression. Significantly there was limited information on personality traits, psycho-pathological factors, life events and lifestyle behaviours.
Selection bias may have occurred from refusal and non-response in the study population. Importantly not all households with births in the study period were surveyed. The households not questioned with the IBIS questionnaire include mothers who moved to “out of area” locations or mothers who declined the nurse first-visit offered. The population who refused an early childhood nurse visit may represent a particular socio-demographic sample.
Observational (information) bias may have been present in the survey data. This could have arisen from recall bias, or interviewer / responder bias. A particular problematic feature of self-reporting surveys is the mental state of the subject. Depressed women are more likely to have a negative view of their circumstances. This must be taken into account when considering the association found in this study of high EPDS with subjective variables such as “rating of own health”, “reluctance to leave the suburb”, and “difficult financial situation”.
The EPDS is administered in English or via an interpreter where the mother is non-English speaking (NESP). We were not able to report in this study on the percentage of NESP mothers in the full sample but the percentage of NESP mothers in the Local Government Areas of Fairfield, Campbelltown, Camden and Wollondilly (linked data) was 11.8 percent at the time of the 2001 Census. This may be an important source of information bias in this study. Specific non-English EPDS are not currently used postpartum in SWS but could be considered for future use.
The mean time of administration of the EPDS was 3.77 weeks postpartum. This is earlier than most other studies which administer assessments in the first 6 – 12 weeks after delivery. The results could potentially be influenced by “Baby/Maternity Blues” (3 – 10 days postpartum) in some respondents with an overestimate of the prevalence of difficulties.
Implications
The study reported here confirms the importance of poverty (“difficult financial circumstances”) and isolation (sole parenthood and lack of emotional and social support) as independent risk factors for maternal depressive symptoms. Taken together these findings support the proposition that social exclusion and social isolation are important determinants of maternal dysphoria with implications for both preventative and treatment strategies. The higher rates of depressive symptomatology among mothers not born in Australia may also be related to social isolation and social exclusion as part of the acculturation process.
The finding of a strong association of depressive symptoms with unmet maternal expectations confirms findings of earlier studies [49]. The strong association of infant behaviour at a mean age of 3 weeks with depressive symptoms supports the proposition that infant irritability is a cause of maternal stress and depression. The possibility of reverse or two-way association cannot, however, be excluded. Interventions that seek to address antenatal maternal expectations of infant behaviour, infant soothing techniques, and relationship adjustment and provide support in the early postnatal period may prove to be effective interventions.
The long term consequence of perinatal depression indicates that preventive interventions for perinatal depression are necessary and important. Both intensive professional postpartum support [50] and home visiting [51] have been confirmed as effective interventions for postnatal depression. Social support networks were protective in the study reported here suggesting that antenatal interventions that promote friendship groups may be beneficial. The effectiveness of antenatal groups in preventing postnatal depression has not yet been confirmed [52] but proactive telephone based peer support has been found to be protective [53]. Thus the findings from this study and recent intervention studies indicate that there is merit in maternal and child health services continuing to develop and evaluate interventions that identify and provide early support for mothers who have, or are “at risk” of, developing depression.