Conclusions , Limitations, Recommendations

Family and Community Medicine II

CONCLUSIONS

The findings of the study show that there is an association between parity and the development of postpartum depression (PPD) with primiparous women having a risk of 2.5 times higher than in multiparous women. There was also a higher prevalence of PPD among women in the primipara category (61.71%) than the multiparous mothers (39.19%). Factors that may affect this relationship include physiologic and hormonal changes which occur during pregnancy, age and maturity of the mother, relationship with the spouse or partner, lactational competence, and the acquisition of a learned set of skills and behaviors required for supporting the growth and development of the newborn. With this knowledge it can be concluded that primiparous women should be monitored more closely to ascertain that the course of the pregnancy runs smooth. Health education should be directed to these mothers and their partners in order to increase the awareness about depression and help prevent the occurrence of untoward incidents related to it. Similarly, multiparous women should not be neglected to be given this kind of care as their increased parity does not confer immunity against PPD.

LIMITATIONS There were extrinsic factors that this study was not able to control such as the number of mothers available during data collection. The researchers cannot, by any means interfere with the target populations activities even during the interview. Few of candidate respondents were not interviewed due to unwillingness to answer the questionnaire. Also, due to time constraints, the researchers were not able to visit the third health center which may have a number of candidate respondents. So, the study was limited to the two health centers with the greatest population of postpartum mothers during the 3rd quarter of 2011.

RECOMMENDATIONS For future studies, the researchers recommend that focus may be given to other factors that may precipitate Post-Partum Depression. These factors, such as age of the mother, relationship with partner, and clinical history of depression were controlled in this study, but other researches may use these as predictors of PPD since there were no published studies in a Philippine setting. Also, further research might want to look for the association of suicidal tendencies among mothers who have a positive EPDS. It is also recommended that other survey tools may be utilized such as The Postpartum Screening Scale or PDSS and Postpartum Depression Predictors Inventory (PDPI) to assess the probability of PPD in a similar or different exposure and target population.