Pregnant women’s mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic according to the trimester of pregnancy

ABSTRACT

Aim: This study aimed to analyse the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on pregnant women according to the pregnancy trimester, comparing their psychopathological symptomatology, pregnancy-specific stress, resilience and perceived stress to those of women pregnant before the pandemic. Methods: A total of 797 pregnant women participated in the study, one group of 393 women pregnant before the pandemic and the other of 404 women pregnant during the pandemic. Student-t test was used to analyse continuous data and the Chi-square test was used for categorical data. Results: Psychopathological symptomatology was significantly higher in six subscales of the SCL-90-R in pregnant women during COVID-19: somatisation, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, phobic anxiety, obsessions-compulsions, mainly on the first two trimesters. There is also a higher level of pregnancy-specific stress in pregnant women during the pandemic on the first two trimesters, most likely due to the hypervigilance and fears related to the COVID-19 disease. Nevertheless, perceived stress, usually elevated during pregnancy, was lower in women pregnant during the pandemic in comparison to those pregnant before, as a positive consequence of being on lockdown and diminishing the exposure to daily stressful situations. Conclusions: Knowing the struggles these women go through during each trimester of pregnancy can be the key to a better health professional-patient relationship, consequently having a positive impact on their mental and physical health.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• pregnancy trimesters
• psychopathology
• stress
• Prenatal period

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all of the women that participated in this study as well as the master interns that collaborated with its elaboration. This study is part of the doctoral thesis of Carolina Mariño-Narvaez.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work makes part of the project I+D+i Ref. PID2019-110115GB-I00 financed by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the State Research Agency 10.13039/501100011033.