the prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder following childbirth and its predictors in iranian women

Objectives: the present study aimed at evaluating the prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (ptsd) following childbirth and its sociodemographic and obstetrics predictors. methods: the current cross sectional study was conducted from april to november 2017 by the random sampling method on 365 women aged 18 - 35 years whose last childbirth occurred within 38 - 42 weeks of gestation and gave birth 10 - 16 weeks before the initiation of the study, in baneh city, kurdistan province, iran. the research tools included a sociodemographic and obstetrics characteristics questionnaire and a checklist of ptsd for dsm-iv. for data analysis, independent t-test, one-way anova, and multiple linear regression with backward stepwise selection were employed. results: the prevalence of ptsd following childbirthwas47.7%. themeanstandard deviation of ptsd following childbirthwas13.6 10.9, out of the attainable score of 0 - 51. the variables, including income status, number of children, desired route of delivery, and the type of recent delivery, were identified as predictors and accounted for 34% of the variance of ptsd adjusted for other variables. conclusions: considering the high prevalence of ptsd following childbirth, to improve the childbirth experience, well-adjusted interventions should be planned to prevent ptsd after delivery.