The incidence and risk factors of depression across six time points in the perinatal period: a prospective study in China

Introduction Perinatal depression (PND) affects approximately 15%-20% of women. This study aimed to determine the incidence of PND and identify risk factors.Methods A prospective study was conducted at the Affiliated People's Hospital of Ningbo University. The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) was used to screen for PND. Classification models were constructed using Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), Logistic Regression (LR), Random Forest (RF), and Support Vector Machine (SVM), and the optimal model was selected.Results Between March 2019 and August 2021, a total of 485 participants completed all valid questionnaires. Depression was observed in 75 (15.5%), 47 (9.7%), 25 (5.2%), 94 (19.4%), 85 (17.5%), and 43 (8.9%) cases during the first trimester, the second trimester, the third trimester, 1 week postpartum, 6 months postpartum, and 12 months postpartum, respectively. During the prenatal period, factors such as monthly income, employment status, marital status, and thyroid function significantly impacted depression. Additionally, factors including monthly income, employment status, marital status, parity, and unintended pregnancy were found to affect the likelihood of developing postpartum depression. XGBoost was chosen for its accuracy (0.9097) and precision (0.9005) in predicting prenatal depression, as well as for its accuracy (0.9253) and precision (0.9523) in predicting postpartum depression.Discussion In conclusion, the incidence of depression varies throughout the perinatal period, with different factors influencing prenatal and postpartum depression.