Screening for depression and anxiety disorders from pregnancy to postpartum with the EPDS and STAI.

• Main Author: Tendais, Iva
• Publication Date: 2014
• Other Authors: Costa, Raquel, Figueiredo, Bárbara, Conde, Ana
• Format: Article
• Language: eng
• Source: Repositórios Científicos de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP)
• Download full: http://hdl.handle.net/11328/1139; https://doi.org/Tendais, I., Costa, R. , Conde, A., & Figueiredo, B. (2014). Screening for depression and anxiety disorders from pregnancy to postpartum with the EPDS and STAI. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, 17(e7). http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/sjp.2014.7.
• topic: Depression; Postnatal depression; Anxiety; Screening

The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and the State Anxiety Inventory (STAI-S) are widely used self-report measures that still need to be further validated for the perinatal period. The aim of this study was to examine the screening performance of the EPDS and the STAI-S in detecting depressive and anxiety disorders at pregnancy and postpartum. Women screening positive on EPDS (EPDS ≥ 9) or STAI-S (STAI-S ≥ 45) during pregnancy (n = 90), as well as matched controls (n = 58) were selected from a larger study. At 3 months postpartum, 99 of these women were reassessed. At a second stage, women were administered a clinical interview to establish a DSM-IV-TR diagnosis. Receiver operator characteristics (ROC) analysis yielded areas under the curve higher than .80 and .70 for EPDS and STAI-S, respectively. EPDS and STAI-S optimal cut-offs were found to be lower at postpartum (EDPS = 7; STAI-S = 34) than during pregnancy (EPDS = 9; STAI-S = 40). EPDS and STAI-S are reasonably valid screening tools during pregnancy and the postpartum.