Maternity Blues and Puerperal Depression in Pakistani Women

This study examines the prevalence of maternity blues and puerperal depression in a heterogeneous sample of 202 Pakistani women. Mothers were assessed for maternity blues two to three days after delivery. As reported by the mothers, 68.3196 of them experienced maternity blues and were placed in the experimental group. The remaining 31.6896 of mothers who did not suffer from maternity blues formed the control group. Mothers in both the groups were administered the Morsbach and Gordon's Maternity Blues Questionnaire (MBQ) (1984) to determine the intensity of maternity blues. The mothers in both the groups were re-examined seven to eight weeks later on Pitt's Questionnaire (1968) for puerperal depression. It was found that there was positive correlation between the scores of MBQ and the Pitt's Questionnaire for the experimental group only. It was also found that mothers in the experimental group had significantly higher scores for depression and were mothers in the control group. The importance of these results for identifying women who are at risk for developing depression are discussed.