Structure of depressive symptoms in pregnancy and the postpartum period

Background: The present study investigated the structure of depressive symp toms in the perinatal period. Method: The Zung Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) was administered to a total of 1329 women in early, middle and late pregnancy and 5 days, 1 month, 6 months, 12 months and 18 months after the delivery. Results: A number of somatic items and the suicidal ideation item of the SDS made low contributions to the evaluation of the severity of dep ression, and as a consequence these were excluded in the principal componen t analysis. Three factors were interpretable as "Cognitive", "Affective ins omnia" and "Attentional" emerged at all eight assessment points. The goodne ss-of-fit index (GFI) generated by confirmatory factor analyses (LISREL 7.2 0) proved sufficiently high on ail eight occasions. Limitation: The present study investigated only one self-rating scale and the sample comprised Jap anese mothers only. Conclusion: The three-factor model of the SDS in the pe rinatal period was derived from exploratory and confirmatory factor analyse s. It is noteworthy that the same three-factor structure emerged at all eig ht collection points in the present study. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. A ll rights reserved.