Effects of Positive Psychology-Based Program for the Depressed Pregnant Women

ABSTRACT

Purpose@#This study examined the effects of a positive psychology-based program for depressed pregnant women. @*Methods@#Of the 221 pregnant women who were screened, 24 were recruited from 4 local women’s clinic in Daegu city, South Korea. Subjects were at 6–29 weeks of gestation and scored 9–13 points on the Korean version of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. Subjects were assigned to experimental (n= 12) and control (n=12) groups. The program consisted of ten 120-minute sessions conducted twice a week. Data were collected during the period between December 21, 2017 and April 12, 2018 and analyzed using IBM SPSS/WIN (ver. 21.0). Homogeneity of the experimental and control groups was evaluated by chi-square test and t-test. Hypotheses were tested by repeated measure analysis of variance. @*Results@#The results revealed that in terms of stress coping styles, the active coping style (group*time= 15.23, p<0.001) increased, while the passive coping style decreased (group*time=15.27, p<0.001). Perceived spouse support (group*time=19.45, p<0.001), self-esteem (group*time=17.39, p<0.001), perinatal depression (group*time=78.77, p<0.001), and flourish (group*time=57.56, p<0.001) have significantly improved in the experimental group compared with the control group. @*Conclusion@#These findings indicate that positive psychology-based program can be useful for pregnant women already suffering from depression to prevent perinatal depression.