Obsessions and compulsions in women with postpartum depression
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The quantity, content, and intensity of the obsessions and compulsions of women with postpartum onset major depressive disorder were compared with those of women with major depressive disorder with non-postpartum onset. METHOD: Sequential cases of women with postpartum onset major depression (N = 37) and major depression (N = 28) who presented to our Women's Mood Disorders program were included. Psychiatric examination using DSM-IV criteria and the Inventory to Diagnose Depression established the diagnosis of major depression. Obsessive thoughts and compulsions were reported on the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale and reviewed during the psychiatric examination. Comparisons between groups were performed with chi-square statistics, Fisher exact test and its extensions, and Mann-Whitney U test. RESULTS: Although more women with postpartum onset major depression (N = 21, 57%) than major depression (N = 10, 36%) reported obsessional thoughts, the difference between the groups was not significant (p = .13). However, for women who endorsed obsessions, those with postpartum onset had a higher median number (median = 7) than women without postpartum onset (median = 2, p = .00). Most of the difference in frequency of thoughts was owing to more women with postpartum onset major depression having aggressive thoughts (N = 20, 95%) than women with major depression (N = 6, 60%, Fisher exact p = .03). The most frequent content of the aggressive thoughts for women with postpartum onset major depression was causing harm to their newborns or infants. The presence or number of obsessional thoughts or compulsions was not related to severity of the depressive episode. CONCLUSION: Childbearing-aged women commonly experience obsessional thoughts or compulsions in the context of major depressive episodes. Women with postpartum onset major depression experience disturbing aggressive obsessional thoughts more frequently than women with non-postpartum major depression.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Among women with postpartum onset major depression, 57% reported obsessional thoughts of harming their baby, and most had checking compulsions.
“In women with postpartum onset major depression, 57% reported obsessional thoughts of harm to their baby, and most had checking compulsions (i.e. highly repetitive night-time checking to make sure the baby is breathing) [44].”
From Perinatal mental illness: Definition, description and aetiology (2014) · cites this paper as [44]
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
Cited by 197
- Authors
- Wisner, K. L., Peindl, K. S., Gigliotti, T., & Hanusa, B. H.
- Affiliations
- Case Western Reserve University (US)
- University of Pittsburgh (US)
- Venue
- The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry
- Publisher
- Physicians Postgraduate Press, Inc
- Published
- 1999-03-15
- Volume
- 60
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 176-180
- ISSN
- 0160-6689 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2050981796
- Cited by
- 197
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 9
- FWCI
- 4.75
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (MH 57102, R01MH057102)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum Disorders
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research
- Keywords
- postpartum depression, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, obsession, compulsive behavior, aggressive obsessions, major depressive disorder, women's mental health
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Compulsive Behavior, Depressive Disorder, Diagnosis, Differential, Female, Humans, Middle Aged, Obsessive Behavior, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Depression, Postpartum
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
