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.

The key findings of this study were as follow:

1. The review covered a total of 33 studies (participants n=131 131).

2. The majority of the research discovered a link between IPV exposure and the development of postpartum depressive symptoms.

3. Overall, studies examined both exposure and results in varied ways while controlling for a wide range of confounders.

4. Thirty percent of the studies were conducted in low-income and lower-middle-income nations, while the remainder were conducted in upper-middle-income and high-income countries, and the link was consistent across settings.

5. The significant aOR varied between 1.18 and 6.87 among the studies reporting adjusted OR (aOR) (n=26) (95% CI 1.12 to 11.78).

6. The bulk of the studies (n=20/33) were rated as 'good quality.'

In conclusion, individual patient data or meta-analysis is necessary to determine the degree of the link between IPV and postpartum depression.

Reference:

Ankerstjerne, L. B. S., Laizer, S. N., Andreasen, K., Normann, A. K., Wu, C., Linde, D. S., & Rasch, V. (2022). Landscaping the evidence of intimate partner violence and postpartum depression: a systematic review. In BMJ Open (Vol. 12, Issue 5, p. e051426). BMJ. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2021-051426