Unified Risk Stratification for Postpartum Depression, Anxiety, and Birth Trauma

Postpartum depression, anxiety and childbirth post-traumatic stress are usually screened with separate screening instruments, even though these problems tend to coexist. This study aims at creating a combined risk stratification scale for maternal mental health, integrating the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, the anxiety subscale of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and the City Birth Trauma Scale. The approach was tested based on the data collected using the questionnaires administered to 410 postpartum mothers. Preprocessing of the data followed by calculation of individual scores, correlation analysis, and estimation of cumulative score allowed to classify participants into the low, moderate and high-risk categories. The findings proved the presence of a strong positive correlation between the scales, which confirms the closeness of symptom domains but makes them non-substitutable. Combined assessment allowed to highlight some participants who may be experiencing a psychological load exceeding what could have been concluded based on a single test. The proposed scale offers an interpretable measure of the cumulative risk of postpartum mental health problems while maintaining individual scores.