Combating Prenatal Depression with Diet: A Literature Review on the Association Between Mediterranean or Mediterranean-like Diet Adherence and the Incidence of Depression in Pregnant Women

Abstract

Background/Objectives: The purpose of this review is to determine if high adherence to the Mediterranean Diet or Mediterranean-like Diet is associated with a decreased incidence of depression or depressive symptoms during pregnancy compared to low or no adherence. Methods: PubMed was used to search for articles. Inclusion criteria consisted of primary research articles from the past 5 years, participants that were pregnant and ages 18-50 years old, the intervention a Mediterranean or Mediterranean-like Diet, and the outcome prenatal depression or prenatal depressive symptoms. Results: Nine primary research studies including five cross-sectional, two longitudinal, one cohort study, and one randomized controlled trial were included in this review. Six of the nine studies reported significant associations between higher Mediterranean or Mediterranean-like Diet adherence and lower incidence of depression or depressive symptoms. Studies with larger sample sizes were more likely to have significant results. Conclusions: Other recent evidence suggests that high adherence to the Mediterranean or Mediterranean-like Diet may decrease the incidence of depression or depressive symptoms in pregnant women. However, there were mixed results reported in the studies included in this review. Thus, conducting further studies of adequate sample sizes, with a unified definition of the Mediterranean Diet in more diverse populations is imperative to further investigate this association.

Keywords: Mediterranean diet; depression; pregnancy.

Figure 1

Flow diagram summarizing inclusion of articles for this literature review.