The influence of labor and delivery experience on postpartum depression: The role of nursing care

55^th World Advanced Nursing and Nursing Practice Congress

March 13-14, 2019 Singapore

Franca Tani

University of Florence, Italy

Keynote: J Nurs Care

Abstract :

Statement of the Problem: In the field of the midwifery and women health, one of the main required competences to provide an efficient nursing care is that of facing the Postpartum Depression (PPD). Actually, this perinatal disease constitutes a relevant risk factor for women, children and families health. Literature has identified several risk factors linked to the PPD onset, such as womenâ??s prenatal psychopathologies, attachment problems, couple relationship quality or perceived social support. Less attention has been played to the role of the birth experience. The main focus of this paper is to investigate the influence of clinical aspects of labor in PPD onset in order to provide an efficient nursing support for women.

Method: 186 Italian healthy nulliparous women (Mage=31.54; SD=5.05) were recruited. Data were collected at two different times, at T1, the day of birth, clinical information regarding labor and delivery were registered from hospital records, modality and length of labor, the administration of oxytocin and epidural analgesia, mode of delivery at T2, one month after birth, the level of PPD was measured using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale.

Findings: Data analyses showed that the typology of caesarean delivery and the duration of the administration of epidural analgesia positively affected the severity of PPD. On the contrary, the oxytocin administration, the modality and the duration of labor not significantly influenced the PPD onset.

Conclusion: The labor experience is a relevant factor that can significantly affect the subsequent maternal mood. For this reason, to foster a positive transition to motherhood one of the main goals of nursing care is providing women a better information about the various possibilities and consequences of labor in order to help them to understand what happens in this important moment of their life.

Biography :

Franca Tani is a Psychologist and Psychoanalyst, Professor of Developmental Psychology at the Department of Health Sciences. She is the Dean of the School of Psychology in the University of Florence, Italy. She is also a Scientific Director of the Inter-Department Research Unit on New Social Pathologies of the University of Florence. Her main research interests concern the analysis of the relationships among intra-psychic dynamics and the development of social and relational competence across lifespan.

E-mail: franca.tani@unifi.it