Does cesarean section compromise mother's mental health?

To assess the effect of method of delivery on women''s mental health to improve of health status. Eleven hundred healthy women who had recently either normal vaginal delivery (NVD) or cesarean section (CS) were studied 6 week after delivery in 2005. The data were collected with using the 36-items short-form (SF-36) questionnaire by interviewing method. SPSS software version 15 was used for statistical analysis. Of 1100 participants, 7 women were missed due to incomplete data. From the rest, 504 (46%) women had normal vaginal delivery and 589 (54%) of them had cesarean section. The mean of age in mothers were 25.5 and 25.9 years old respectively. Mean and standard deviation of mother''s mental health score were 62.8 ± 18.6 and 60.4 ± 19.4 in normal delivery and cesarean section group respectively (t = 2.1; p < 0.05). In comparison to mothers with normal vaginal delivery, mothers who had cesarean section had lower mental health status.