The Relationships between Prenatal Attachment, Basic Personality Traits, Styles of Coping with Stress, Depression, and Anxiety, and Marital Adjustment Among Women in the Third Trimester of Pregnancy

Abstract

Aims and Scope Eurasian Journal of Medicine (Eurasian J Med) is an international, scientific, open access periodical published by independent, unbiased, and tripleblinded peer-review principles. The journal is the official publication of

Prenatal Attachment and Perinatal Depression: A Systematic Review

“…The included studies were mainly conducted in the US (10 papers) [80,[84][85][86][87][88][89][90][91][92] and in Europe (nine papers in Italy [93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101], four in Sweden [76,[102][103][104], two in Germany [105,106], one in the Netherlands [22], one in France [107], one in England [79], one in Belgium [108], and one in Portugal [75]). Four studies were carried out in Japan [81,[109][110][111], two in Australia [112,113], two in Iran [74,114], two in Turkey [78,115], one in India [116], one in Israel [117], one in Chile [118], one in Brazil [119], and one in Korea [120] (Figure 2). All the articles were published between 1988 and 2019 (…”

“…Thirteen studies [76,[78][79][80]85,87,93,96,100,103,109,113] did not observe significant results. Ten papers reported that lower levels of prenatal attachment were associated with higher postnatal depression scores [74,81,95,99,101,105,110,111,116,117]; however, one study [85] did not support the association between these two variables. Four studies analyzed the influence between partner's depressive symptoms and own prenatal attachment [75,87,97,102].…”

“…Considering the 45 studies included in the current review, 31 found a negative association between prenatal attachment and perinatal depression [22,74,75,81,84,86,[89][90][91][92]95,[97][98][99]101,102,[104][105][106][107][108][110][111][112][114][115][116][117][118][119][120], while a positive relation between perinatal depression and some dimensions of antenatal attachment was identified in three studies [94,102,106]. Thirteen studies did not highlight significant associations between these variables [76,[78][79][80]85,87,88,93,96,100,103,109,113].…”

“…Thirteen studies did not highlight significant associations between these variables [76,[78][79][80]85,87,88,93,96,100,103,109,113]. Specifically, the majority of the articles (28) observed a negative association between prenatal depressive symptoms and prenatal attachment [22,75,81,84,86,[89][90][91][92]94,97,98,102,[104][105][106][107][108][110][111][112][114][115][116][117][118][119][120]. In contrast, a positive association between prenatal depression and some dimensions of prenatal attachment (i.e., the "physical contact with the fetus and sensitivity to the fetal movement" subscale of the MFAS [102], the "empathy" subscale of the German version of the MFAS [106], and the "fantasy" and the "maternal sensitivity to the fetus" factors of the PAI [94]) was found in three studies…”

“…Nineteen of the 29 studies that administered prenatal attachment instruments in the second or the third trimester of gestation underlined a significant association between the two considered variables [22,74,84,86,[90][91][92]95,97,98,101,102,[104][105][106]112,[115][116][117]: 16 studies confirmed a negative association between prenatal attachment and prenatal depression [22,84,86,[90][91][92]97,98,102,[104][105][106]112,[115][116][117] and six studies identified a negative association between prenatal attachment and postnatal depression [74,95,101,105,116,117], while a positive relation was found between prenatal depression and some factors of prenatal attachment in two studies [102,106]. Even if they assessed prenatal attachment in the recommended gestational period, ten articles did not demonstrate a significant association between prenatal attachment and prenatal depression…”