The effects of previous spontaneous abortion on the mental problems of current pregnancy

Abstract

Introduction. The risk of developing mental illness is significantly increased during pregnancy. The most common obstetric complication is spontaneous abortion. Women with a history of previous spontaneous abortion are at higher risk of developing mental problems during their subsequent pregnancy. Aim. We examined the effects of a history of previous spontaneous abortion on emotional problems during subsequent pregnancy. We examined 987 pregnant women at the 1st Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of semmelweis university in budapest, Hungary between 01-10-2012 and 31-08-2013. among them there were 265 pregnant women who had at least one episode of previous spontaneous abortion. Material and methods. We measured depression using the EPDS test. anxiety was measured using the spielberger (STAI) tests. We designed a questionnaire to gather socio-demographic data. We used the chi-square test and Wald-Wolfovitz test to test for the statistical significance of associations. Results. We found that 24.21% of the sample had depression, and 8.61% of the sample had anxiety. According to the number of previous spontaneous abortions we compared 3 groups: 722 women had no spontaneous abortion previously, 169 women had one previous spontaneous abortion and 96 women had 2 or more spontaneous abortions before. Depression, anxiety and previous mental illness were examined in these groups. Those women who had spontaneous abortion 2 or more times before got significantly higher scores in the EPDS test, than those who had no or just one spontaneous abortion. among them 28.1% had mental illness previously. We found that prior mental illness and spontaneous abortions are independent predictors of antenatal depression. Among those women who had 2 or more spontaneous abortions before, the mean age and the number of single women was significantly higher, while the average level of education was significantly lower than in the other two groups. Conclusions. Higher age, lower level of education and the lack of partner relationship can be associated with the number of spontaneous abortions. The number of episodes of spontaneous abortion and a history of mental illness are risk factors for depression during a subsequent pregnancy.