What are women stressed about after birth?

Background: Having a baby is associated with a variety of stressors, change, and adjustment. This study aimed to identify what women find stressful during the early postpartum period in contemporary Western society.

Methods: Women (n = 148) 6-12 weeks postpartum wrote anonymously about a situation they found stressful as part of the Health after Birth Trial (HABiT) of expressive writing.

Evaluation of expressive writing for postpartum health: a randomised controlled trial.

Pregnancy, birth and adjusting to a new baby is a potentially stressful time that can negatively affect the health of women. There is some evidence that expressive writing can have positive effects on psychological and physical health, particularly during stressful periods. The current study aimed to evaluate whether expressive writing would improve women's postpartum health.

Juror Decision Making in Acquaintance and Marital Rape: The Influence of Clothing, Alcohol, and Preexisting Stereotypical Attitudes.

Stereotypical biases about women's roles in intimate relationships including their marital status and lifestyle choices such as clothing and alcohol use influence juror attributions of rape case defendant guilt, potentially reducing access to justice for victims. Across two mock-juror decision-making experiments, participants read identical fictitious sexual assault vignettes varying in intoxicated defendant-complainant relationship (married vs. acquaintance), accompanied by photographs of complainant clothing at the crime (body revealing vs.

Feasibility and acceptability of expressive writing with postpartum women: a randomised controlled trial.

Background: Pregnancy, birth and adjusting to a new baby is a potentially stressful time that can negatively affect women's mental and physical health. Expressive writing, where people write about a stressful event for at least 15 min on three consecutive days, has been associated with improved health in some groups but it is not clear whether it is feasible and acceptable for use with postpartum women. This study therefore examined the feasibility and acceptability of expressive writing for postpartum women as part of a randomised controlled trial (RCT).

Seeking help for perinatal psychological distress: a meta-synthesis of women's experiences.

Background: Women may not seek help for perinatal psychological distress, despite regular contact with primary care services. Barriers include ignorance of symptoms, inability to disclose distress, others' attitudes, and cultural expectations. Much of the evidence has been obtained from North American populations and may not, therefore, extrapolate to the UK.

Assessing physical symptoms during the postpartum period: reliability and validity of the primary health questionnaire somatic symptom subscale (PHQ-15).

Introduction: This study aimed at establishing the reliability and validity of the primary health questionnaire (PHQ-15) somatic symptom severity subscale for postpartum women.

Methods: Women (N = 495) completed the PHQ-15 approximately 6 weeks postpartum during the baseline phase of a randomized controlled trial evaluating a writing intervention for postnatal health in England. Reliability was assessed using internal consistency statistics and convergent validity by comparing differences in self-reported physical health, health-related quality of life (QoL) and primary care usage by PHQ-15 symptom severity category.