Perinatal relapse or recurrence rates in women reporting preconception anxiety and/or depression: a longitudinal study using linked data.

Purpose: Few robust estimates of perinatal anxiety and/or depression in women who experienced anxiety and/or depression before pregnancy have been reported in the literature. This study calculated rates of perinatal anxiety and depression in women with a history of the disorders using data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health, the Australian Government's Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and the Medicare Benefits Schedule.

Methods: The analysis included two cohorts of Australian women. The first comprised 14,247 women born between 1973 and 1978 with nine waves of data collected from 1996 to 2018. The second cohort included 17,010 women born between 1989 and 1995 with data collected from six waves between 2013 and 2019. The proportion of women who reported anxiety and/or depression before having a child and who then reported anxiety and/or depression perinatally (i.e. relapse/recurrence) was calculated for first births and for any birth.

Results: Compared to women who did not report preconception anxiety or depression, rates of perinatal anxiety and depression were higher among women reporting either condition pre-conceptually. For women in the 1973-78 cohort, the rate of perinatal anxiety was 24% (vs. 7%) and the rate of perinatal depression was 26% (vs. 10%). In the 1989-95 cohort, the rate of perinatal anxiety was 43% for women with preconception anxiety (vs. 18%) and the rate of perinatal depression was 41% for women with preconception depression (vs. 12%).

Conclusions: Given the high rates of perinatal relapse or recurrence in women with preconception anxiety and/or depression, as well as the well-established risks to the health and development of their offspring, supporting these women to remain asymptomatic during the perinatal period is a priority.