The Postpartum Depression Screening Scale-Spanish Version: Examining the Psychometric Properties and Prevalence of Risk for Postpartum Depression

Abstract

The Postpartum Depression Screening Scale (PDSS) has been recently used to assess postpartum depression (PPD) in ethnic minority women, including Spanish-speaking Latinas from predominantly Mexico and Puerto Rico. Given the heterogeneity in the countries of origin for Spanish-speaking immigrants to the U.S., this study examined the psychometric properties and prevalence of PPD risk of the Spanish version of the PDSS in a sample of Latina immigrant mothers from predominantly El Salvador and other Central American countries. One hundred and 55 Latina immigrants (El Salvador: n = 91, Other Central America: n = 40, Mexico: n = 24) at high risk for PPD, who were part of a preventive intervention trial, participated in this study at 6-8 weeks postpartum. Results indicate that the PDSS had excellent internal consistency. The seven dimensions of the PDSS had good to excellent internal consistencies, with lower alphas for the Anxiety/Insecurity subscale. Approximately two-thirds (63.9%) of the women scored above the clinical cut-off score (> or =60) for combined major/minor PPD on the PDSS-Spanish version. Additional research is needed to further validate the PDSS-Spanish version in clinical research and community settings.

Magnitude and risk factors for postpartum symptoms: A literature review

“…However, immigrants have relatively high postpartum depression prevalence in Western and non-Western countries; this finding may be due to the challenges associated with migration status, racial and cultural differences (Pearlstein et al, 2009;Le et al, 2010;Chien et al, 2012;Hung et al, 2012;Lucero et al, 2012). Women from a low socioeconomic status are also at particularly high risk of postpartum depression.…”

“…The subgroups of populations documented to experience postpartum depression are immigrants, mothers of ill newborn and neonatal intensive care unit infants, epilepsy patients, military wives, women with low socio-economic status, women with preterm birth, and women who experienced a natural disaster. Immigrants have high postpartum depression prevalence of 0.5-65.0% in Western and nonWestern countries (Pearlstein et al, 2009;Le et al, 2010;Chien et al, 2012;Hung et al, 2012;Lucero et al, 2012). Postpartum depression was reported to be 7-70% in mothers of ill newborn (de Alencar et al, 2009;Lefkowitz et al, 2010;Gold et al, 2013;Guo et al, 2013), 13% in mothers of preterm infants (Korja et al, 2008) and 23.5% in mothers of infantile colic infants (Akman et al, 2006).…”

Validation of the Spanish Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression and Zung Self-Rating Depression Scales: A Comparative Validation Study

“…In other Spanish speaking settings outside Latin America, the PHQ-15 showed a good internal consistency (C-α = 0.78), as did the GDS, when used in visually impaired individuals (C-α = 0.91) and the Postpartum Depression Screening Scale (C-α = 0.97) [20]–[22]. Adequate internal consistency and discriminative properties were reported for the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule II (WHO-DAS II) (co≥50; ss = 71.4%; sp = 67.6%; proportion of correctly classified individuals (cc) = 70.4%) [22] and for the Euro-D in Spanish elderly (C-α = 0.75; area under the ROC curve auROC = 0.92, co≥3; ss = 91.8%; sp = 76.6%) [23].…”

Postnatal depression in Mexican American fathers: Demographic, cultural, and familial predictors

“…Studies have observed rates of PPD in Hispanic women to be considerably higher than women in the majority culture, with estimates ranging from 28–64% (Chaudron et al, 2005; Kuo et al, 2004; Le et al, 2010; Martinez-Schallmoser et al, 2003) as compared to prevalence rates of 7–19% among Caucasian women (Gavin et al, 2005). The incidence of PPD may be similarly elevated among Hispanic men, however research has yet to evaluate prevalence rates within this population.…”