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Happy mothers…happy babies

Pregnancy is the highest risk period in a woman’s life for developing clinical depression. Stress and anxiety during pregnancy are common experiences. Women are usually anxious about the pregnancy and the delivery, about how they will cope with motherhood and the impact of the changes that having a baby will make on their lives. We now know that 50% of what was thought to be postnatal depression commences during pregnancy.
The idea for this project arose from observations in the course of conducting our HRB-sponsored research into the depression during pregnancy. Our screening for depression, as part of our procedures for recruiting participants to our research programme, indicated levels of depression comparable with international norms, about 10%. While depression during pregnancy is routinely screened for in most EU countries, it is largely an unacknowledged problem in Irish obstetric services. There are no published studies even on the rates of depression during pregancy. In this project, we wish to highlight the key messages relating to screening and referral for care for depression during pregnancy. We will do this through compiling the simple statistical findings that we have incidentally collected through our research. A report based on these findings will be professionally launched, initiating an Awareness Campaign. This will involve educational seminars for health care workers, a poster-and-leaflet campaign, and websites for health care workers and for the public.
We predict that our key messages will disseminate from this local project to a national level through an effective media campaign.