Perinatal depression screening

This project follows from the extensive research undertaken by the Department of Psychological Medicine from the Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra, which allowed us to determine the gaps in screening, identification and prevention of perinatal depression.

It is dramatic that despite the vast and serious consequences of perinatal depression for the mother and the baby, 75% of the cases with this treatable disease are not identified by health professionals and in the absence of screening programs, only 10% of women receive treatment (Hewitt et al. 2009).

Beyond the dozens of publications in the form of scientific papers in the field of perinatal mental health, particularly on perinatal depression, we have been disseminating our outcomes in national and international scientific meetings and we recently published a book (written in Portuguese) with the systematization of our findings and their clinical implications.

With this new project named “Screening, prevention and early intervention in the perinatal depression in primary care,” whose responsible investigator is Doctor Ana Telma Pereira, we were able to continue developing this line of research, presenting the main implications of the findings we have reached in the last decade to women and health professionals. Thus, from screening tools already developed and validated by us, and using the knowledge of what are the main risk factors for perinatal depression, we now intend to identify, prevent and intervene. This is the only way science makes sense.

Over the last years we relied on voluntary collaboration of hundreds of women who agreed to participate in our research, offering us a lot of their during such a busy and exhausting time of their lives. It is to them and their families that this project aim to help.