Content area
Full text
Abstract In the presence of physical and psychological disturbances in the postpartum period, perceived social support is often regarded as a protective factor in womens mental health. This work evaluates the psychometric properties of the French version of a questionnaire widely used internationally to measure perceived social support, which has not been yet validated in French: the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS). This study collected data from 148 women(30.5 5.12 years) who agreed to complete the MSPSS and a scale assessing symptoms of postpartum depression (Edinburgh Post-Natal Depression Scale, EPDS) 1 and 4 months after childbirth. The results conrm the original three-factor structure of the scale. The Cronbachs alpha coefcients are excellent. The total scale score is correlated with all three dimensions and a signicantly negative correlation is found between MSPSS and EPDS. The results suggest that the French tool has generally good internal reliability. The MSPSS can provide useful data helping to identify French-speaking people at risk for negative feelings (e.g., mood disorders of perinatal period).
Keywords Perceived social support MSPSS
Motherhood Postnatal depression
Introduction
The postnatal period is characterized by many physiological changes that result in the development of more or less intense psychological disturbances in women: postpartum blues, postnatal depression, brief episode of postpartum psychosis [1] or even posttraumatic stress disorder following childbirth [2]. In France, the prevalence of postnatal depression is approximately 17 % [3] and 5 % for post-traumatic stress disorder [2]. Psychological disturbance associated with childbirth and the postnatal period is not inevitable but social support is thought to be an important inuence on womens mental health in this specic period. Social support is dened as the general availability of friends and family members providing psychological and material resources [4]. The authors make the distinction between perceived social support and received social support.
Many factors related to the risk of developing psychological symptoms after childbirth have been identied but several studies advance the deleterious repercussions of a perceived lack of social support on maternal mental health. Studies suggest that depressed women have fewer supportive gures than the other mothers [5]; and they report less support from their spouse, either emotional or instrumental [6]. Recent studies have conrmed these observations. Depressed mothers receive less social support, in particular...