Postpartum depression and its correlation with spiritual health

Postpartum depression has a high prevalence in communities and needs great financial resources. On the other hand, the world views the spiritual health as a new and complementary dimension of health. The aim of this study was to investigate the correlation between postpartum depression and spiritual health.

This correlational-analytic study was conducted on 152 women who gave birth 8 months ago, referred to Hajar Hospital, Imam Ali hospital, Molavi clinic, or other health centers of Shahrekord, and were also satisfied with participating in the study. They were selected by the simple sampling method and completed the Palutzian and Ellison Spiritual Health Questionnaire. Finally, the collected data were entered in SPSS software and descriptive statistics in addition to the Pearson correlation coefficient and K2 test were used to analyze the data.

In the present study, the mean age of the subjects was 29.15 (SD=5.45) with the range of 16-45 years. The mean scores of spiritual health and depression were obtained 96.3 and 8.94, respectively. The results of this study showed that the Pearson correlation coefficient was -75.5% (P˂ 0.001), demonstrating an inverse correlation between the scores of postpartum depression and spiritual health.

In general, the correlation between postpartum depression and spiritual health was an inverse correlation and the level of depression decreased by an increase in spiritual health. It can be concluded that without the need for specific treatments, the level of postpartum depression can be reduced by increasing the level of spiritual health.