Nurses are well aware that depression after childbirth -- often called the baby blues -- is fairly common, affecting as many as 15 percent of women who give birth. However, anxiety=s effects on the mother can be just as serious as depression and may overlap with postpartum depression symptoms. According to a study published in the July 1998 issue of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, the depression and anxiety often come after the first child because the new mother does not have previous experience with which to compare it. We are proposing a research study to compare the psychoemotional consequences of early and late postpartum discharge on mothers of newborn infants. Depression and anxiety levels will be the specific psychoemotional consequences that will be examined. These variables are selected for examination because they are variables that are directly related to people=s general levels of psychoemotional balance, and because they have also been discussed in previous research.
The only mothers that will be included in the sample will be first-time mothers with single births, normal birthweight infants, and uncomplicated labor and deliveries. The sample is restricted solely to mothers who meet these criteria in order to control for variations in length of hospital stay that might be due to low infant birthweight, complications at labor and delivery, multiple births and other variables.
The study=s research problem can be stated as an attempt to answer the following research questions:
1. Are mothers= depression levels significantly different depending upon differences in length of hospital stay following delivery?
2. Are mothers= anxiety levels significantly different depending upon differences in length of hospital stay following delivery?
Theoretical Definition of the Variables
The variables of research interest in the proposed study may be theoretically and conceptually defined as follows:
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