Intimate partner violence associated with postpartum depression; BMJ

In a new study, Lea Bo Snderlund Ankerstjerne and colleagues discovered evidence of a link between experience of intimate partner violence (IPV) and the development of postpartum depressive symptoms. The findings of this study were published in the British Medical Journal.

Domestic abuse during pregnancy can have both immediate and long-term physical and mental health repercussions for the family. As a result, it has been proposed that IPV may influence the chance of developing postpartum depression. The purpose of this study was to investigate the evidence of a relationship between intimate partner violence and postpartum depression.

The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses standards were followed when conducting the systematic review. PubMed, Global Health Library, Embase, Scopus, and Google Scholar were searched for published studies with no language, time, or research design constraints (up to May 2020). Studies were selected if they examined postpartum depression in women who had been subjected to IPV (emotional, physical, and/or sexual abuse) using the Edinburg Postnatal Depression Scale (cut-off≥10). The Newcastle-Ottawa scale was used to assess the quality of the research.