Independent socio-demographic and clinical correlates associated with the perception of quality of life of women with postpartum depressionin North-central, Nigeria

Objective: Quality of life (QoL) is probably the most desired outcome of all health care policies and monitoring. This concept is seldom used on women in the postpartum, especially in the developing world.

Aim: This study aimed at determining the independent socio-clinical variables associated with the perception of QoL of women with postpartum depression.

Methods: A two-stage cross-sectional procedure was used to recruit 550 participants, out of whom 531 participants completed the questionnaires with 116 participants found to have postpartum depression and were the studied population, in Nigeria. The Socio-demographic questionnaire, the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale, the World Health Organization Quality of Life-Bref-26 and the Depression Module of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV axis I Diagnosis were used.

Results: Participants with postpartum depression had significantly poor perception of QoL in all the four domains of the WHOQoL-BREF-26. The independent socio-demographic and clinical correlate associated with poor perception for both rating of QoL and satisfaction with health was education (β = 0.321, p < .001 and β = 0.0326, p = .002, respectively); for physical domain [(modes of delivery) (β = -0.28, p = .016)]; psychological domain [(age <35years) (β = 0.391, p = .010)] and for social relationships [(complications during delivery) (β = 0.257, p = .043)].

Conclusions: The determination of the predictors of QoL, which is an indicator of disease outcome will improve service delivery to women of childbearing age.