Violence during pregnancy and postpartum depression

Objectives: to estimate the prevalence of physical and emotional violence and postpartum depression in a pregnant iranian population. methodology: this is a cross-sectional survey. a consecutive sample of women who were routinely referred to health care centers for immunization of their two month infants after delivery were enrolled in this study. they were interviewed by a designated research nurse using the edinburgh-postpartum-depression-scale (epds) and abused-assess-scale (aas). results: nearly two-third of women reported some kind of violence; 59.7% had experienced one or more types of emotional abuse, and 37.0% reported physical violence during the pregnancy. the prevalence of postpartum depression was approximately 45.8%. the highest odds ratio of postpartum depression were associated with husband’s drug abuse, domestic violence, woman’s education. conclusion: the high prevalence of different types of domestic violence during pregnancy and postpartum depression and their significant relationship should be regarded as a priority for local and possibly national health service policy.