A psychiatric epidemiological study of postpartum Chinese women

Objective: Epidemiological studies in the 1980s have suggested that depress ion is rare in the Chinese population and there is no postpartum depression among Chinese women. However, subsequent small-scale studies of postpartum depression in China have yielded contradictory and inconsistent findings. Furthermore, after two decades of profound socioeconomic transformation, de pression may no longer be rare in the contemporary population. The authors conducted a psychiatric epidemiological study among postpartum Chinese wome n using rigorous methodology and a representative sample. Method: A total of 959 consecutive women were recruited at the antenatal cl inic of a university hospital in Hong Kong. At 3 months postpartum, the pre valence and incidence rates of depression were measured with a two-phase de sign. The participants were first stratified by means of the 12-item Genera l Health Questionnaire. Subsequently, all high scorers and 10% of low score rs were assessed with the nonpatient version of the Structured Clinical Int erview for DSM-III-R. The 1-month and 3-month prevalence and incidence rate s were estimated by using reverse weighting. Results: The 1-month prevalence rates for major and minor depression were 5 .5% and 4.7%, respectively. At 3 months, the corresponding prevalence rates were 6.1% and 5.1%. Together, 13.5% of the participants suffered from one or more forms of psychiatric disorder in the first 3 months postpartum. Conclusions: Postpartum depression is common among contemporary Chinese wom en. A universal postpartum depression-screening program would be useful for early detection. Our data suggest that depression may no longer be rare in the Chinese population.