Trajectories and Correlates of Anger During the Perinatal Period.

Objectives: To investigate trajectories of anger during pregnancy and the early postpartum period; to identify baseline psychosocial predictors of anger trajectory group membership; and to examine correlates of anger trajectory group membership, including symptoms of depression, anxiety, insomnia, and social support, in the postpartum period.
Design: Longitudinal descriptive design.
Setting: We recruited participants from a maternity clinic in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Participants: The sample included a convenience sample of 143 pregnant women who had basic fluency in English, were older than 17 years of age, and were less than 19 weeks gestation with a single fetus at the time of recruitment.
Methods: Participants completed online questionnaires at four time points: early, mid-, and late pregnancy and 2 months after birth. We used group-based semiparametric mixture modeling to estimate patterns of anger. We used multinomial logistic regression to explore associations between baseline predictors and trajectory membership.
Results: We identified four distinct trajectories of anger during pregnancy through 2 months after birth: minimal-stable anger (55%), mild-stable anger (24%), moderate-stable anger (14%), and high-decreasing anger (7%). Membership in the moderate-stable group was associated with greater baseline symptoms of depression, anxiety, and insomnia severity scores compared to the minimal-stable anger group. Moderate-stable trajectory group membership was also associated with greater symptoms of anxiety, depression, and insomnia at 2 months after birth.
Conclusion: Higher levels of anger were associated with worse mental health in pregnancy and after childbirth in our participants. Women should be made aware of anger as a possible mood disturbance by clinicians, and researchers should investigate the consequences of anger during the perinatal period.
Competing Interests: Conflict of Interest The authors report no conflicts of interest or relevant financial relationships.
(Copyright © 2022 AWHONN, the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)