Conceiving for the first-time usher’s young women to motherhood (Arendell, 2000). The drastic hormonal changes that occur during the pregnancy period, facilitate the physical changes observed. Sudden increase in Estrogen and progesterone have an impact in the woman moods and her touch with the environment (Parker and Gagnon, 2015). Alteration in food taste, sleeping behaviors, smell and sight senses develops a challenge to these new mothers. Persistence of this changes during pregnancy can lead to stress which may be amplified to depression. However, these changes may negatively affect the mother and the fetus health and may highly contribute to complications such as miscourage when not treated or dealt with at an early stage. After delivery, the new mother faces challenges in getting used to life with the newborn. Since it is her first time to breast feed, to hold a baby and also to nurse the infant, this new experience may make her feel uncomfortable and lead to development of postpartum depression.
Post-partum depression is a serious mental health disorder that occurs few days after giving birth. It may last few weeks to two months. During this time, the mother experiences frequent episodes of sadness, embarrassments, anxiety, irritability and low sex drive (Latha, Bellamkonda and Viriti, 2016). The shame that the mother feels for being depressed makes many to develop mechanisms of hiding their shame and these seriously increases the postpartum depression. Studies have indicated that prenatal and postpartum depression can negatively affect the growth of the infant and bring detrimental health defects (Tomlinson, cooper, Stein, Swartz and Molteno, 2006). Antenatal depression being the major risk factor for postpartum depression, financial hardship and unwanted pregnancy are major causal factor for antenatal depression (Rich-Edwards et al, 2006).For instance, the teenagers at their tender age are prone to these depressions. Therefore, it is important for the mother to be guided and supported on how to go through this period. The social support given to themothers during pregnancy acts as protection factor against postpartum depression (Tani and Castagna, 2017). Support provided by health care givers and family members plays a big role in this pregnancy period. Functional families, that is, families that provide an environment that one feels physically and mentally safe. Here everyone is treated with respect and there is no abuse or discrimination. Research where mothers were asked to explain how the social support helped them feel during pregnancy and after delivery indicated that the fear and anxiety experienced during this period faded away as they talked to friends and therapist and this created awareness of what to expect and how to deal with the changes. It is unfortunate that most women go through this new experience in their life without proper support and care. It even goes unnoticed that they face challenges even after birth. However, the negative implications of the postpartum depression go unnoticed by the public and closest relatives and the depression may cause detrimental impacts in the mother’s life. The postpartum depression causes less mother to child interaction. This may delay the growth of the child since the mother helps the child to familiarize with the environment through communication. The mother may also be less sensitive to the child’s needs. For example, may not be sensitive enough to determine when the baby needs to be breastfed or to sleep. This negatively affect the child and may lead to malnutrition and other health related issues posing a risk to the child’s life. Socio economic status have been seen to be a contributing factor to postpartum depression. The low socioeconomic risk factors such as low monthly income, less than a college education, unmarried status and unemployment exposed mothers to postpartum depression eleven times more than mothers who had high socioeconomic status (Goyal, Gay and Lee, 2010). This therefore indicates that the groups at risk of this disorder are the teenagers, uneducated, unemployed and unmarried mothers.
Therefore, the aim of this experiment is to determine the whether telephone-based support to first time mothers from both low socio economic and high socio-economic status has an impact in terms of improving postpartum depression. Telephone based support is a supportive method to pregnant mothers that is performed by health workers or volunteers during the gestational period and few weeks after delivery.Telephone based support was seen to be more effective in reducing the postpartum depression (Milani, Azargashb, Beyraghi, Defaie and Asbaghi, 2015). Studies done to determine the effective methods of reducing postpartum depression indicated that telephone-based support provided by health volunteers to find information using questionnaires, indicated positive effect since there was a reduction in the postpartum depression. The hypothesis of the experiment is that the telephone-based support will reduce the postpartum depression in both low and high socio-economic status mothers.
Participants
The experiment consisted of sixty participants from a developed country who are new mothers. That’s is, who had given birth at most two weeks postpartum. They were between the ages of twenties too mid-thirties. After a diagnosis test that determined whether a mother had been previously exposed to depression and anxiety or a first-time mother had developed postpartum depression, thirty of the participants were selected from a high socioeconomic status and the other group of thirty mothers were from a low socio-economic status and all should be from a functional family.
Materials
The Edinburgh postnatal scale (JL Cox,J M, Holdon, R Sazovsky, 1987) was used to determine the participants to be involved in the experiment. The Latrobe post-natal depression scale questionnaire that consists of ten self-evaluating questions that are ranked on a scale of 1 to 5 was used. variables to categorize women with postnatal depression from low and high socioeconomic status such as age, education level, employment and marital status were used.
Procedure
The experiment had a control group of 30 women from a high socioeconomic status and an experiment group of 30 women from a low socio-economic status. The control and the experimental groups were further divided into two groups of 15 participants each. Fifteen participants from the low socioeconomic status and fifteen from high socioeconomic status were put in a counselling program that was conducted by a public health worker for 16 weeks. The program involved a phone call to the participants that lasted one hour. The other 15 women from the two groups were not exposed to the program. After 4 weeks all the participants were required to answer a Latrobe Post Natal Depression Scale questionnaire to compare the level of postpartum depression.
The data collected from the questionnaires were analyzed using the Microsoft excel. It was found that the mothers who received telephone-based support had a reduce rate of experiencing postpartum depression. As indicated by the p value being lower than the significance level set as 0.05%. the analysis indicated that those who were not exposed to the counselling program (group 1) had a tendency of developing postpartum depression than those who were exposed (group 2) to the program (standard deviation of 5.87 and 6.13 respectively) whereby their mean score for group 1 and group 2 were 27.30 23.90 respectively. The deviation from the mean indicate the likelihood of developing the postpartum depression. A larger deviation means less likelihood.
Fig 1 the mean of the scores
Fig 2 standard deviation of the scores
Telephone-based support has a positive effect in reducing the postpartum depression. This is important to help the new mothers to adapt to this new life and be in a position to bring up their babies in the right way. Increased awareness of mood swing and asking the pregnant women how they feel makes them understand that what happening in them is normal and will go away after sometime (Robert, Grace, Wallington and Stewart, 2004). These findings are important to the health workers to understand the essence of early screening of prenatal depression to facilitate early recovery so as to prevent development of the postpartum depression and is detrimental to the child growth (Field, 2010). As research indicates that the identification of mother’s support needs and expectations is important for mother’s recovery after child birth (Negron, Martin, Almog, Balbierz and Howel, 2013). The finding can also be used to educate the public on how to care fore the pregnant women during the gestational period and also after delivery.
Conclusion
As stated by Paulson and Bazemore (2010), postpartum depression has been in rise due to lack of awareness of how to help the pregnant and the new mothers and it has negative personal, family and child development outcomes. Though the socioeconomic status plays a big role in the development of postpartum depression, support to both the low and high socioeconomic status mothers should be provided equally to enhance recovery and to facilitate normal growth for the newborn. Noting that the men are also affected by this postpartum depression it is also important to consider them during the supportive time (Cox, 2005). I therefore recommend this supportive technique to be adopted in the health sectors and the public to be educated on its importance by the relevant bodies.
References
Arendell, T. (2000). Conceiving and investigating motherhood: The decade’s scholarship. Journal of marriage and family, 62(4), 1192-1207.
Cox, J. (2005). Postnatal depression in fathers. The Lancet, 366(9490), 982.
Field, T. (2010). Postpartum depression effects on early interactions, parenting, and safety practices: a review. Infant Behavior and Development, 33(1), 1-6.
Goyal, D., Gay, C., & Lee, K. A. (2010). How much does low socioeconomic status increase the risk of prenatal and postpartum depressive symptoms in first-time mothers?. Women’s Health Issues, 20(2), 96-104.
Latha, S. S., Bellamkonda, G., &Viriti, U. S. (2016). Post-partum depression. Pharmaceutical and Biological Evaluations, 3(4), 450-455.
Milani, H. S., Azargashb, E., Beyraghi, N., Defaie, S., &Asbaghi, T. (2015). Effect of telephone- based support on postpartum depression: a randomized controlled trial. International journal of fertility & sterility, 9(2), 247.
Negron, R., Martin, A., Almog, M., Balbierz, A., & Howell, E. A. (2013). Social support during the postpartum period: mothers’ views on needs, expectations, and mobilization of support. Maternal and child health journal, 17(4), 616-623.
Parker, R. G., & Gagnon, J. H. (Eds.). (2013). Conceiving sexuality: Approaches to sex research in a postmodern world. Routledge.
Paulson, J. F., & Bazemore, S. D. (2010). Prenatal and postpartum depression in fathers and its association with maternal depression: a meta-analysis. Jama, 303(19), 1961-1969.
Rich-Edwards, J. W., Kleinman, K., Abrams, A., Harlow, B. L., McLaughlin, T. J., Joffe, H., & Gillman, M. W. (2006). Sociodemographic predictors of antenatal and postpartum depressive symptoms among women in a medical group practice. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 60(3), 221-227.
Robertson, E., Grace, S., Wallington, T., & Stewart, D. E. (2004). Antenatal risk factors for postpartum depression: a synthesis of recent literature. General hospital psychiatry, 26(4), 289-295.
Tani, F., &Castagna, V. (2017). Maternal social support, quality of birth experience, and post- partum depression in primiparous women. The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine, 30(6), 689-692.
Tomlinson, M., Cooper, P. J., Stein, A., Swartz, L., &Molteno, C. (2006). Post?partum depression and infant growth in a South African peri?urban settlement. Child: care, health and development, 32(1), 81-86.
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