Sleep patterns and dream content may be affected by stressful life events such as pregnancy loss. Women who are pregnant subsequent to a prior pregnancy loss tend to have anxious and emotionally charged experiences during their pregnancies. Dreams can affect pregnancy outcomes, specifically premature birth. This qualitative study is the ...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the influence of previous perinatal loss on depressive symptoms, pregnancy-specific anxiety, and prenatal attachment for parents during subsequent pregnancies. DESIGN: Cross-sectional, survey design. PARTICIPANTS: Forty expectant couples who experienced a prior perinatal loss. Measures: Influence of loss (Impact of Event Scale [IES]), depressive symptoms (Center for Epidemiologic ...

A young, anxious mother's first pregnancy was eclamptic, her placenta was underperfused, and her son was stillborn. She carried grief, guilt, anxiety, and hypervigilance into her next preeclamptic pregnancy, birth (of her small-for-dates son), and early postpartum period. When breastfeeding difficulties developed, the authors intervened with three consecutive (skin-to-skin) breastfeedings. ...

The objective of this article is to review the literature as to the presence of depression during and after pregnancy and some of its clinical implications; and to present a simple statistical aide for screening purposes. Clinical depression affects at least one in five women of childbearing age. During pregnancy, ...

OBJECTIVE: Assessment of general anxiety during pregnancy may underestimate anxiety specifically related to pregnancy. Pregnancy anxiety rather than general anxiety has been shown to predict birth outcome and neuroendocrine changes during pregnancy. Therefore, a questionnaire on pregnancy anxieties was used to test their structure, and to examine their associations with ...

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the obstetric outcome and health care consumption during pregnancy, delivery, and the early postpartum period in an unselected population-based sample of pregnant women diagnosed with antenatal depressive and/or anxiety disorders, compared with healthy subjects. METHODS: Participants were 1,495 women attending 2 obstetric clinics in Northern Sweden. The ...

OBJECTIVE: To provide an update of literature on the safety of using selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) during pregnancy. METHODS: MEDLINE was searched for English-language papers published from 1985 to 2003 on human studies of SSRIs, using the key words "serotonin reuptake inhibitors," "citalopram," "fluoxetine," "fluvoxamine," "paroxetine," and "sertraline." RESULTS: ...

Despite substantial interest in the effects of stress on pregnancy, few instruments are available to measure pregnancy-specific stressors. Moreover, research has typically focused on the distressing, negative aspects of pregnancy. This report examines the reliability and validity of the Pregnancy Experience Scale (PES), a 41-item scale that measures pregnancy-specific daily ...

BACKGROUND: Animal studies have shown that prenatal stress is linked with altered laterality in the offspring. AIMS: The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that antenatal maternal anxiety was associated with altered lateralisation in children, as demonstrated by mixed handedness. STUDY DESIGN AND SUBJECTS: We used the ...

OBJECTIVE: Pregnancy has frequently been referred to as a time of emotional well-being for patients. However, systematic data about the risk for relapse of depression during pregnancy are sparse. METHOD: We completed a longitudinal cohort study of thirty-two (N = 32) women with histories of depression who were euthymic at ...

Human and animal studies indicate that repeated stress during pregnancy can produce long-term biological and behavioural disorders in the offspring. In contrast, although maternal stress is supposed to induce an increase of maternal anxiety, few studies have been conducted to demonstrate it. Therefore, in the present study we examined the ...

Pregnancy is a period of enormous physio-pathological and psychosocial adaptation in a woman's life. Although it is usually a time of joy and anticipation, many women experience some degree of anxiety, concern and fear regarding their own health and that of their babies, as well as the approaching labour. Worry ...

Prenatal maternal stress has been shown to impair functioning in nonhuman primate offspring. Little is known about the effects of prenatal stress on intellectual and language development in humans because it is difficult to identify sufficiently large samples of pregnant women who have been exposed to an independent stressor. We ...

Associations between antenatal maternal anxiety, measured with the State Trait Anxiety Inventory, and disorders in 8- and 9-year-olds were studied prospectively in 71 normal mothers and their 72 firstborns. Clinical scales were completed by the mother, the child, the teacher, and an external observer. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that ...

BACKGROUND: Pregnancy has frequently been described as a time of emotional well-being conferring 'protection' against psychiatric disorders. However, data to support this impression are sparse. METHODS: A retrospective review was undertaken in order to examine rates of reintroduction of antidepressants across pregnancy among a cohort of 54 euthymic pregnant women ...

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric disease affecting around 1% of the population, the negative signs of which are correlated with inactivity of the prefrontal dorsolateral cortex, while an increased, more deeply localized, activity in the mesolimbic pathway may explain the positive signs. Several events occurring during pregnancy are likely to be ...

The long-term implication of how men cope during a partner's pregnancy, at childbirth or following miscarriage has not received attention. This study aims to examine if men's coping response during pregnancy, at childbirth, or miscarriage predict psychological outcomes at the time of childbirth/miscarriage or 1 year later, and to establish ...

Eighty-four depressed pregnant women were recruited during the second trimester of pregnancy and randomly assigned to a massage therapy group, a progressive muscle relaxation group or a control group that received standard prenatal care alone. These groups were compared to each other and to a non-depressed group at the end ...

Termination of pregnancy for fetal malformation is a traumatic event which any woman finds hard to withstand and which entails the risk of severe and complicated grieving. This paper presents three cases illustrating the trauma and coping mechanisms. Grieving continued for over 6 months in all cases and included pathological ...

Studies in rodents have shown that, during pregnancy, maternal stress from restraint, noise, light, and heat among other factors may be associated with adverse effects on embryo/fetal and postnatal development. Moreover, it is also well known that exposure to certain metal levels during gestation can also cause maternal and developmental ...

This review is an attempt to provide an integrative view for the biological changes triggered by fetal stress through a multidisciplinary approach. Acceleration of brain and lung maturation in certain risk pregnancies was first described clinically and confirmed by biochemical, electrophysiological and experimental data. Moreover, new experimental findings suggest that ...

Lepidium peruvianum root has been traditionally utilized by native Peruvians, since before the time of the Incas, for both nutritional and putative medicinal purposes as an adaptogen and also to enhance fertility in humans and animals. The present research was conducted to evaluate the anti-stress activity of the methanolic extract ...

The aim of this study was to determine neonatal outcomes among women who had depressive and anxiety disorders during the second trimester of pregnancy in a population-based sample. Participants were 1,465 women and their neonates born at two obstetric clinics in Sweden. The inclusion period for the women was October ...

In this paper the author reviews Freud's study of Schreber's Memoirs and the Memoirs themselves from a perspective of nearly 100 years. He argues that Schreber's illness began as a melancholic depression but quickly developed paranoid features which subsequently escalated into a gross paranoia which nevertheless retained its depressive and ...

About 20% of pregnant women experience clinical depression. Inadequate treatment of depression has been associated with adverse outcomes in the mother as well as the newborn. Clinicians are often uncertain about pharmacological interventions to treat depressed pregnant women due to concerns regarding fetal exposure to medications. Moreover newer antidepressants with ...

Whether left-handedness is due to genetic factors or to pregnancy and birth stress events is an important question for models that attempt to explain the origins and distribution of human handedness. Major genetic theories of handedness, such as those of Annett (1985) and McManus (1981), allow for a nondetermination of ...

Pregnant rats subjected to very mild stress give birth to pups who, when examined as adults, exhibited behavioral and anatomical anomalies that resemble some aspects of schizophrenia. The nucleus accumbens (NAcc) is reduced in volume by 20.7 +/- 3.4% (p = 0.003) in pups born to mothers who were stressed ...

Mammalian preimplantation embryos are vulnerable to heat stress. However, the mechanisms by which maternal heat stress compromises embryonic development are unclear. We hypothesized that the loss of developmental competence in maternally heat-stressed embryos results from enhanced oxidative stress in the oviducts. In experiment 1, oviducts and zygotes were collected from ...

A review of the literature demonstrates that the incidence of new mental disorders and their prevalence during pregnancy is similar to the 12-month incidence of mental disorders in women during other periods of their lives. The prevalence of severe mood, behavior, and cognitive symptoms during pregnancy is rather high. Severe ...

Pregnancy has frequently been described as a time of affective well-being. However, a growing literature suggests that women are neither "protected" against new-onset or recurrence of depression during this time. Diagnosis and effective treatment of depression during pregnancy requires a careful weighing of risk of treatment which may include psychotropic ...

The aim of this study was to examine the risk of depression in the postpartum period (first four months after delivery) as compared to the remaining postnatal year and the pregnancy period. All postpartum women from two municipalities in Norway were included in a questionnaire study of mental health (n ...

Niederhofer showed in 1994 that maternal stress during pregnancy seemed to be associated with temperament in early childhood. This study examined the correlation between maternal stress during pregnancy in 227 women, ultrasound observation of intrauterine fetal movements, the child's temperament in early childhood, and the child's school marks at the ...

Pregnancy and childbirth typically are associated with positive emotions and with motherhood, but the reality is that this is not the case for all women or for all pregnancies. This review addresses a different aspect of these reproductive events, focusing on stressful circumstances surrounding pregnancy, as well as times when ...

Antenatal bladder neck mobility is known to be associated with postpartum stress incontinence. Whether this represents a normal feature of pregnancy or a pathological process is unclear. Forty-eight nulliparous volunteers had perineal ultrasound scans to assess bladder neck mobility. Using previously defined cutoffs (for incontinence), 50% had increased linear movement ...

BACKGROUND: There is evidence that stressors may trigger the onset of a depressive episode in vulnerable women. A new UK interview measure, the Contextual Assessment of the Maternity Experience (CAME), was designed to assess major risk factors for emotional disturbances, especially depression, during pregnancy and post-partum. AIMS: With in the ...

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of maternal perceived stress in high-risk pregnancy on participation in health promoting self-care. Orem’s self-care deficit theory of nursing was the theoretical framework. A secondary analysis from a convenience sample of 69 women experiencing a high-risk pregnancy was conducted. The ...

Depression during pregnancy is common, affecting an estimated 20% of women. However, conflicting data exist concerning the outcomes of this disorder. Thus, we reviewed studies that presented evidence for the use of antidepressants and those that examined untreated depression during the gestational period, in terms of clinical and epidemiological aspects.Observational ...

OBJECTIVES: Male psychologic stress can affect semen quality and couple fecundability. METHODS: We conducted a prospective study of 430 Danish couples who were trying to become pregnant for the first time. In each menstrual cycle, both partners filled out a 12-item version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12), an assessment ...

OBJECTIVE: It has been demonstrated that physiological responses to stress are diminished late in pregnancy. This study investigates whether emotional responding is diminished as well by measuring affective responses to specific life events during pregnancy. METHODS: A total of 292 pregnant women reported the occurrence of and affective responses to ...

Although almost all literature on burnout implicitly assumes that burnout is primarily caused by stressful employee-customer interactions, only a few studies have addressed this empirically. A principal-components analysis of a newly developed instrument assessing various forms of customer-related social stressors (CSS) in 3 different service jobs (N = 591) revealed ...

The aim of this exploratory was to investigate the theory of a relation between cytochrome P450 2D6 (CYP2D6) genotype and depressive symptoms in late pregnancy and/or postpartum. We studied 145 women with depressive symptoms. CYP2D6 genotype was analysed in leukocyte DNA by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). There were no significant ...

QUESTION: One of my patients who was taking an antidepressant for major depression is now pregnant and does not wish to take it any more. I believe she needs to continue her medication. She, however, is adamant about stopping it because she believes it would put her baby at risk. ...

Traumatic stress has traditionally been studied in the aftermath of traumatic events. In contrast, this study aimed to explore if traumatic stress can occur before an event that is perceived as threatening or feared. Traumatic stress, as related to the forthcoming delivery, was studied in 1224 women. Background data and ...

The typical symptoms of recurrent winter depression include lowered mood, lethargy, hypersomnia, social withdrawal, decreased libido, increased appetite and weight gain. Mild hypomania often occurs in spring and summer. It is argued that this pattern of attenuated hibernation constituted an adaptive evolutionary mechanism which enhanced the likelihood of reproductive success, ...

OBJECTIVE: In comparison to its female counterpart, the transition of men to parenthood has been relatively neglected in previous research. The present paper argues that men may have gender-specific risk factors for perinatal psychological distress and may manifest distress in ways different from women. The prime objective of this research ...

A strong association between stress in pregnancy and small head circumference in infants at birth was reported in 1994. This important finding has never been replicated. In a follow-up study of 4211 participants with singleton pregnancies, information on life events was collected twice during pregnancy and head circumference measured shortly ...

Prenatal diagnosis is usually performed in the early weeks of gestation in order to avoid medical and emotional maternal risks in the event of fetal malformation. This study examines emotions such as depression, stress and anxiety in pregnant women and their partners with regard to the week of gestation in ...

BACKGROUND: Early life stress, including during fetal development, has been hypothesized to predispose individuals to several illnesses and psychiatric disorders later in adulthood. METHODS: To determine whether prenatal stress alters neural, hormonal, and behavioral processes in nonhuman primates, pregnant rhesus monkeys were acutely stressed on a daily basis for 25% ...

This article presents the Cambridge Worry Scale (CWS), a content-based measure for assessing worries, and discusses its psychometric properties based on a longitudinal study of 1,207 pregnant women. Principal components analysis revealed a four-factor structure of women's concerns during pregnancy: socio-medical, own health, socio-economic and relational. The measure demonstrated good ...

BACKGROUND: This study is one of the first to investigate the association between maternal report of fever during middle to late pregnancy and psychological, behavioral, and educational outcomes in offspring. The hypothesis guiding this research was that maternal fever during the second trimester of pregnancy has an adverse effect on ...