Pediatrics
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Comparative Study
Identifying postpartum depression: are 3 questions as good as 10?
Postpartum depression is the most common medical problem that new mothers face. Anxiety is a more prominent feature of postpartum depression than of depression that occurs at other times in life. Routine, universal screening significantly improves detection in primary health care settings. Thus, an ultrabrief scale that could be incorporated into a general health survey or interview would be useful. ⋯ The brevity, reliability, and operating characteristics of the Edinburgh Postpartum Depression Scale-3 make it an attractive postpartum depression screening tool for primary health care settings in which the goal is to detect depression, not to assess its severity. Validation by diagnostic psychiatric interview is needed.