One in three new mothers during early COVID-19 screened positive for postpartum depression, a new study shows.

That’s nearly triple pre-pandemic levels.

The researchers also found 1 in 5 had major depressive symptoms.

Before COVID, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 1 in 8 women experienced postpartum depression, and about 5 to 7% experienced major depressive symptoms, says lead author Clayton Shuman, assistant professor of nursing at the University of Michigan.

The new study in BMC Research Notes comes from a larger study that gave rise to several papers about pregnancy and postpartum experiences during COVID.

For this paper, researchers collected survey data between February and July 2020 from 670 US postpartum patients who completed the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale online and provided demographic information.

Their research found that:

  • Moms who fed infants formula had 92% greater odds of screening positive for postpartum depression and were 73% more likely to screen positive for major depressive symptoms, compared to those who breastfed or bottle-fed with their own human milk.
  • Moms with infants in neonatal intensive care units had 74% greater odds of screening positive, and each one-week increase in weeks postpartum increased the odds of screening positive by 4%.
  • Moms worried about contracting COVID-19 had 71% greater odds of screening positive for postpartum depression.

Read the full article about post-partum depression by Laura Bailey at Futurity.