ABSTRACT
Background: women's empowerment programs during pregnancy focus primarily on increasing women's health goals and psychological empowerment has been considered important in most issues related to pregnant mothers' mental health. Using path analysis, this study aims to examine the direct and indirect components of psychological empowerment of pregnant mothers
Methods: this model-testing study was conducted in Gorgan, northwest of Iran during three months in spring of 2015. Through random cluster sampling, a total number of 160 pregnant women were selected from 10 urban medical centers and clinics as primary centers. We used Spritzer's Psychological empowerment scale. Suitable sampling based on Nunally and Bernstein was followed in the model. The relationships between the dependent variables were then examined by means of path analysis using Amos 18
Results: the psychological empowerment of pregnant mothers [PEPW] model is impacted by individual factors, such as marriage age and employment, including some subjectively rated factors such as marital satisfaction and experience of violence. The PEPW model was deemed appropriate as optimum conditions indicators of goodness of fit; low index of CHI[2]/df shows little difference between the conceptual model and observed data, while RMSEA value indicated the goodness of fit. Other indicators such as CMIN=0.957, CMIN/DF=0.957, P-CLOSE=0.418, CHI[2]=0.957 and probability level=0.328 the fact that the model is ideal. The mothers' employment had the highest coefficient in the PEPW path model .731 [0.443, 0.965] bootstrap confidence intervals by 95%, and with a p-value of less than 0.05
Conclusions: the mothers' employment is the most important factor in psychological empowerment, but it cannot be addressed quickly. Programming to increase marital satisfaction followed by a decrease in family violence and prevention of early marriage are necessary for promotion of psychological empowerment during pregnancy
ABSTRACT
Postpartum depression may be related to pregnancy and postpartum fatigue. This research was accomplished to investigate the relationship between maternal fatigue in pregnancy and postpartum period with postpartum depression. In this research, 60 women with 36 weeks of gestational age and Edinburgh scale score equal or less than 9, were selected through a multi-stages sampling method among the clients of health care centers in 2009 in Mashhad, north-eastern part of Iran. Fatigue was assessed by Modified Fatigue Symptom Checklist in 36-7 weeks of pregnancy, and 5 and 14 days of postpartum. Postpartum depression was evaluated by Edinburgh scale and interview at the postpartum days 5, 14 and 28. Data were analyzed by chi-square, fisher, variance analysis with repeated scores, correlation and regression tests using SPSS software. There were significant correlation between fatigue in the 37[th] week of pregnancy with postpartum depression in the 5[th] [r=0.651, P=0.045], 14[th] [r=0.651, P=0.045] and 28[th] day [r=1.000, P=0.000]. Also there was a significant correlation between the fatigue in 36[th] week of pregnancy, and postpartum depression in 5[th] day [r=1.000, P=0.000] and also between the fatigue in 14[th] day of postpartum and postpartum depression in 28[th] day [r=1.000, P=0.000]. Expression of fatigue at the end of pregnancy and postpartum period is related to postpartum depression. Fatigue in pregnant women must be considered as a predicting factor of postpartum depression