A study of working memory and postpartum depression

Postpartum depression is a common mood disorder affecting newly delivered mothers. Women with postpartum depression reveals the symptoms of depressed mood, low energy level, unable to feel the pleasure, low self-esteem, poor concentration, impaired working memory, anxiety, and social isolation. For these, most of the women are diagnosed within first six month after delivery. Previous studies showed that depressed patient suffer from cognitive difficulties i.e. working memory. The present study examines working memory deficits during the postpartum period in mothers. For this study we had randomly selected 30 newly mothers from different families and hospital in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. In this study the participants were evaluated during home and hospitals visits using Edinburg Postnatal Depressive Scale (EPDS), as screening for depressive symptoms and using the digit span test as a measure of cognitive ability specifically verbal working memory. SPSS software was used for statistical analysis. The result revealed that postpartum depression affects the verbal working memory of newly delivered women. ≥13, and the word span scores were evaluated as discrete variable