Women with poor mental health ‘have 50pc higher risk of preterm birth’

LONDON: Women who struggle with their mental health have an almost 50 percent higher risk of preterm births, according to the biggest study of its kind.

The research, published on Tuesday in the Lancet Psychiatry, examined data from more than 2m pregnancies in England and found about one in 10 women who had used mental health services had a preterm birth, compared with one in 15 who did not.

The study also found a clear link between the severity of previous mental health difficulties and adverse outcomes at birth. Women who had been admitted to psychiatric hospital were almost twice as likely to have a preterm birth compared with women who had no previous contact with mental health services.

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And women with history of mental health difficulties faced a higher risk of giving birth to a baby that was small for its gestational age (75 per 1,000 births compared with 56 per 1,000 births).

The study recommends that when pregnant women are first assessed by doctors and midwives they should be sensitively questioned in detail about their mental health.

One of the reports authors, Louise Howard, professor emerita in women’s mental health at King’s College London, said such screening would help identify “clear red flags for a possible adverse outcome”.

She said once these mental health risk factors are identified they can be treated, potentially reducing instances of maternal deaths, stillbirths, premature births and underweight babies.

Howard said: “Mental illness is a treatable problem … maternity professionals will be focused on thinking about other modifiable risk factors such as smoking and obesity, but they may not have thought about some of the additional risks that women with mental illness may have.”

The study found that 0.65 percent of pregnant mothers who had been admitted to psychiatric hospital had a stillbirth, compared with 0.45 percent of women who had no pre-pregnancy mental health care. Howard said: “These are quite small numbers, but they’re still devastating in terms of stillbirths.”