The mediating role of sleep quality in the relationship between social support and depressive symptoms in early pregnant women

Objective: To explore the mediating effect of sleep quality between social support and depressive symp-toms in pregnant woman at the early pregnancy stage. Methods: Pittsburgh sleep quality index (PSQI), social sup-port revalued scale (SSRS), and self-rating depression scale (SDS) were used to investigate the sleep quality, social support status and depression of 269 pregnant women in early pregnancy in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Maternal and Child Health Hospital from July 2022 to December 2022. Pearson correlation analyses and Bootstrap were used to test the correlation and mediating effect between variables. Results: The social support scores of pregnant women were inversely proportional to the scores of sleep quality and depression (r =-0.178 and-0.219, P < 0.05). The sleep quality of pregnant woman score was positively correlated with depression symptom score (r = 0.139, P < 0.05). The sleep quality of pregnant women in early pregnancy played a partial mediating role between social support and depressive symptoms, and the mediating effect value was-0.029 (95% CI:-0.057--0.007). Conclusion: Social support can affect the occurrence of depression in pregnant woman at the early pregnancy stage, and sleep quality plays a partial mediating role.