Psychological symptom profiles of postpartum depressive symptoms among female healthcare workers: a cross-sectional latent profile analysis

Female healthcare workers may resume demanding clinical or support roles while adapting to postpartum recovery and infant care. Total scores on depression screening tools may obscure meaningful differences in symptom composition. We aimed to identify item-level profiles of postpartum depressive symptoms among female healthcare workers in northeastern Sichuan, China, and to examine factors associated with profile membership. This cross-sectional anonymous online survey included 1,012 female healthcare workers within 24 months after childbirth. Latent profile analysis was used to identify symptom profiles from the 10 Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) item scores, and multinomial logistic regression was used to examine sociodemographic, occupational, familial, and psychological factors associated with assigned profile membership. Candidate factors were selected using unadjusted omnibus between-profile P values < 0.05. The six global factor-level P values in the primary model were adjusted using the Benjamini–Hochberg false discovery rate procedure. Using an EPDS threshold of ≥ 10, 61.5% of participants screened positive for clinically relevant depressive symptoms. The retained four-profile solution comprised a low-symptom profile ( n = 427, 42.2%), a diminished positive affect profile ( n = 203, 20.1%), a prominent self-blame and sleep disturbance profile ( n = 260, 25.7%), and a high-symptom with elevated self-harm-related thoughts profile ( n = 122, 12.1%). Classification quality was acceptable (entropy = 0.845; average posterior probabilities, 0.869–0.945). After false discovery rate correction, career motivation and participant-reported history of depression in the participant’s mother remained associated with profile membership. Postpartum depressive symptoms in this occupational sample varied in both severity and item-level expression. The 61.5% screening-positive proportion is sample-specific and should not be interpreted as diagnostic prevalence. The profiles and associated factors are exploratory; nevertheless, self-blame, sleep disturbance, and self-harm-related thoughts warrant focused assessment and prospective investigation.