Violence and women's psychological distress after birth: an exploratory study in Italy

Abstract

Our aim in conducting this study was to analyze the relationships between violence and maternal psychological distress 8 months after a birth, taking into account other important psychosocial factors, known to be associated both with violence and with new mothers' mental health. A total of 352 women responded to a questionnaire after the birth at a maternity hospital in northern Italy, and 292 also participated in a telephone interview 8 months later. We evaluated psychological distress with the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), and partner and family violence with a 28-item scale. Eight months postpartum, 5% of women showed high psychological distress; 10% were currently experiencing violence from the partner or another family member. After adjustment for covariates, the odds ratio for depressive symptoms was 13.74 for women experiencing violence. We believe that these results provide support for the important role of violence in postpartum maternal psychological distress.

FIGURE 1

Mediation analyses. Numbers in italics are odds ratios (with stars indicating significance levels of ^*p < .05, ^**p < .01, and ^***p < .001) from bivariate logistic regression models, showing that the variables of interest (labeled as X) meet the first two conditions for mediation. Numbers in bold are adjusted odds ratios from multivariate logistic regression models showing that the odds ratios for the variables of interest are reduced and non significant when the mediator (labeled as Z) is also included in the model.