The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) is a 10-item questionnaire that was developed to identify women who have

postpartum depression Postpartum depression (PPD), also called perinatal depression, is a mood disorder which may be experienced by pregnant or postpartum women. Symptoms include extreme sadness, low energy, anxiety, crying episodes, irritability, and extreme cha ...

. Items of the scale correspond to various

clinical depression Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known as clinical depression, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two weeks of pervasive low mood, low self-esteem, and loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. Intro ...

symptom Signs and symptoms are diagnostic indications of an illness, injury, or condition. Signs are objective and externally observable; symptoms are a person's reported subjective experiences. A sign for example may be a higher or lower temperature ...

s, such as guilt feeling, sleep disturbance, low energy,

anhedonia Anhedonia is a diverse array of deficits in hedonic function, including reduced motivation or ability to experience pleasure. While earlier definitions emphasized the inability to experience pleasure, anhedonia is currently used by researcher ...

, and

suicidal ideation Suicidal ideation, or suicidal thoughts, is the thought process of having ideas or ruminations about the possibility of dying by suicide.World Health Organization, ''ICD-11 for Mortality and Morbidity Statistics'', ver. 09/2020MB26.A Suicidal i ...

. Overall assessment is done by total score, which is determined by adding together the scores for each of the 10 items. Higher scores indicate more depressive symptoms. The EPDS may be used within 8 weeks postpartum and it also can be applied for depression screening during

pregnancy Pregnancy is the time during which one or more offspring gestation, gestates inside a woman's uterus. A multiple birth, multiple pregnancy involves more than one offspring, such as with twins. Conception (biology), Conception usually occurs ...

. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale is a widely used depression screening tool, which has been adapted and validated in many languages.

History

The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale was first developed (1987) by Scottish health centres in

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

and Livingston.http://www2.illinois.gov/hfs/MedicalProvider/MaternalandChildHealthPromotion/Pages/Edinburgh.aspx ,

References

{{Depression rating scales Depression screening and assessment tools

History

See also

References