Obesity and the association with maternal mental health symptoms

Abstract

Obese women had higher rates of depression in early pregnancy compared to nonobese women. As many of the health behavior interventions for obese women during pregnancy have proven ineffective, incorporating depression screening and treatment into prenatal care may improve perinatal outcomes.

Maternal Obesity and Perinatal Depression: An Updated Literature Review

“…Two of the primary analyses studies were prospective cohort studies, and one study was a retrospective cross-sectional cohort study [19][20][21]. Of the secondary analyses, three were analyzing prospective cohort studies, and one was an analysis of a randomized controlled trial [22][23][24][25]. Four of the studies were based out of the United States, although one study based out of the United States used a Norwegian dataset [19,[23][24][25].…”

“…Of the secondary analyses, three were analyzing prospective cohort studies, and one was an analysis of a randomized controlled trial [22][23][24][25]. Four of the studies were based out of the United States, although one study based out of the United States used a Norwegian dataset [19,[23][24][25]. The other three articles were based out of Finland, Australia, and the United Kingdom [20][21][22].…”

“…The average size of study participants was 9,094 women, ranging from 357 to 39,915 women. [20,23]. Of note, one study included only obese mothers who were class III obesity or higher [20].…”

“…Various scales or metrics were used to assess peripartum depressive symptoms. Three studies used the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) [22,23,25]. Two studies used the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) [19,21].…”

Psychiatry and Obstetrics: An Imperative for Collaboration

“…These adversities contribute to higher disease risk in the mother (10) and in her child throughout the life course (11). While we recognize that psychiatric disorders are complex biological, familial, and societal illnesses, recent research has established that one origin of these disorders is during fetal development.…”