COMPARISON OF POSTNATAL DEPRESSION IN WOMEN FOLLOWING NORMAL VAGINAL DELIVERY AND CAESAREAN SECTION: A PILOT STUDY

Objective: to compare the frequency of postnatal depression in women following normal vaginal delivery and caesarian section. methodology: a comparative study was conducted in departments of obstetrics & gynecology of lady reading hospital, khyber teaching hospital and hayatabad medical complex, peshawar from november 2009 to january 2010. a total of 100 women; 50 cases of normal vaginal delivery and 50 cases of caesarian sections were included in the study through purposive, non-probability sampling technique. a semi-structured demographic proforma and edinburg post-natal depression scale (epnds) were used for data collection by interviewing the cases between 1st and 8th post partum weeks. all findings were recorded in spss and excel sheets. chi square test was applied as the test of significance and p- value of less than 0.05 was considered significant. results: the mean age of the sample was 29.68± 6.8 years (range 15-52 years). in women that underwent caesarean section (n=50), 29 (58%) were found as having depressive illness while in the group of women that gave birth through normal vaginal delivery (n=50), 12 (24%) were having depression (p- value < 0.001). conclusion: the study concluded that postnatal depression is significantly more common in the females undergoing caesarian sections as compared to the normal vaginal deliveries.