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Assessing the utility of the Healthy Start Screen to predict an elevated Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale score

  • Mikela M. Padilla , Dikea Roussos-Ross EMAIL logo and Amie J. Goodin ORCID logo

Abstract

Objective

To examine the utility of the Healthy Start Screen (HSS), which is an assessment of health, environment, and behavioral risk factors offered to all pregnant women in the state of Florida, in identifying women at risk for developing postpartum depression (PPD).

Methods

The sample for this Institutional Review Board (IRB)-approved, retrospective study consisted of patients who presented to a women’s clinic for a new prenatal visit. Those patients who completed both the HSS at their prenatal visit and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) at their postpartum visit were included. We focused on items 1–10 of the HSS, where patients could respond with either “yes” or “no”, and identified a positive EPDS as any score greater than or equal to 12.

Results

Women who identified as feeling down, depressed or hopeless, feeling alone when facing problems, to having ever received mental health services, or to having any trouble paying bills were more likely to have an EPDS score greater than or equal to 12.

Conclusion

The HSS, currently mandated by the state of Florida to be offered to all pregnant women, is a useful tool for identifying women at increased risk of developing PPD.


Corresponding author: Dikea Roussos-Ross, MD, Associate Professor and Division Director, Division of Gynecology, Gynecologic Surgery and Obstetrics, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Florida College of Medicine, P.O. Box 100294, Gainesville, FL, USA; and Department of Psychiatry, University of Florida College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA, Tel.: +352-273-7827

  1. Research funding: None declared.

  2. Author contributions: All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.

  3. Competing interests: Authors state no conflict of interest.

  4. Ethical approval: The study protocol was approved by the local institutional review board (IRB #201800695).

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Supplementary Material

The online version of this article offers supplementary material (https://doi.org/10.1515/jpm-2019-0472).


Received: 2019-12-23
Accepted: 2020-03-13
Published Online: 2020-04-10
Published in Print: 2020-06-25

©2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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