Effectiveness of self-assisted couple communication program on prenatal depression symptoms and marital quality / 中国心理卫生杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To explore the effectiveness of self-assisted couple communication program(SACCP)onprenatal depression and marital quality in pregnant women.Methods:Totally 90 pregnant women receiving ante-natal checkup in Air Force Medical Center with the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale(EPDS)scores of ≥10 were voluntarily recruited and randomly allocated in routine caring and SACCP groups.Thirty-nine pregnant women in SACCP group and 37 pregnant women in routine caring group ultimately completed the study.In addition to rou-tine caring,the SACCP group completed a 10-week self-assisted family communication program once a week.The EPDS and Olson Marital Quality Questionnaires(ENRICH)were used as outcomes,and covariance and independ-ent t-teat were adopted to evaluate intervention effectiveness.Statistical analysis was conducted using the full analy-sis set and the per protocol set respectively.Results:Totally 76(84.4％)pregnant women received allocation and end-point revaluation.Covariance analysis revealed that EPDS adjusted means were higher in the SACCP group than in the routine caring group(P＜0.05)in both sets.T-test showed that marital satisfaction and couple communica-tion scores were higher in the SACCP group than in the routine caring group(Ps＜0.01)in the full analysis set.Conclusion:The self-assisted couple communication program(SACCP)could effectively alleviate clinical symptoms of prenatal depression of pregnant women and improve marital quality.