A Comparative Study of the Effect of Anxiety, Stress and Poor Sleep on Multipara and Nullipara Pregnant Women.

Introduction: Sleep is an essential component of well-being. It is defined as a reversible behavioral state of perception disengagement from unresponsiveness to the environment. Sleep deprivation leads to stress, leading to mental issues like mood disorders and depression. This study has a prime focus on how the psychological parameters, like anxiety and stress, are affected by sleep deprivation during pregnancy and differentiates these in nullipara and multipara women.

Aim And Objectives: The aim of this study was to study the effect of sleep health on the psychological health of pregnant women. The objectives were (i) to assess the quality of sleep in pregnant women by using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI 21 items), (ii) to compare the quality of sleep in multipara and nullipara pregnant women by using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), (iii) to compare the psychological health in multipara and nullipara pregnant women by using the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) & Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), and (iv) to compare the strength of association between sleep health and psychological health in multipara and nullipara pregnant women.

Materials And Methods: This is a cross-sectional study, done on 346 naturally conceived singleton literate pregnant women of age 18-41 years at eight weeks to 28 weeks of pregnancy who visited FMHS SGT Hospital Obstetrics & Gynecology Department following our inclusion criteria and gave consent during the study period. The study was conducted for a duration of six months from July 2024 to December 24.

Results: The study results show that out of 346 women, 200 (57.80%) were nulliparous and 146 (42.2%) were multiparous. Among 346 women, 186 (53.76%) had poor sleep with a mean ±SD of 6.28  2.56, out of which 73 (39.24%) were multipara and 113 (60.75%) pregnancies were nullipara. A positive correlation of 0.53 was present between PSS-10 and PSQI global score. Also, a strong correlation of r=0.57 was present between the PSQI global score and GAD-7.

Conclusion: Increased levels of stress and anxiety had a vicious direct effect related to the poor quality of sleep by acting over HPA axis activity. Poor sleep health is an important indicator of the mental health of women during pregnancy. Multiparous women have better coping strategies than nulliparous women as they are more experienced from their previous pregnancies.