Abstract:

Background: Depression is a common mental disorder characterized by persistent sadness, lack of interest or pleasure, tiredness, feelings of guilt, or low self-worth, disturbed sleep or appetite, and poor concentration as defined by WHO. About 15 % of women are known to be depressed at some point during their lifetime and more predominantly during pregnancy and after childbirth. Depression is the most prevalent psychiatric disorder during pregnancy and is associated with psychosocial and clinical obstetric factors. Depressive disorders are not only common and chronic among women throughout the world but also principal sources of disability. The scarce information and limited attention to the problem might aggravate the consequence of the problem and can limit the intervention to be taken. Therefore, the current study will be conducted to determine the prevalence and identify associated factors for antenatal depression.

Methodology: This will be a healthy facility based cross-sectional study conducted at ANC clinics of the Magu district. Study will be done for the period of September to November 2021.The study participants will include 344 pregnant women. Women will provide data at one time point during their pregnancy by completing the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale and a structured questionnaire assessing psychosocial, demographic, and obstetric risk factors related to antenatal depression. Then data will be collected and then entered into Epi-Data and will be processed by SPSS version 20 for analysis to determine the relationship between risk factors examined and antenatal depression.

Results: Prevalence of depression during the antepartum period assessed via EPDS was 30.5%. Underlying chronic illness contributes about 15.2% in the development of antepartum depression. Other contributing exposure factors for antepartum depression includes; unintended pregnancy, low or lack of partners support, low/lack of support from relatives, family history of mental disorder, presence of mental stressor and low economic income.

Conclusion: APD was prevalent among the study population. The significant factors identified in this study can be targeted to reduce the occurrence of APD among pregnant women in Magu District through appropriate social and public interventions which include APD screening, counselling, and the provision of emotional support for pregnant women during antenatal care