Examining the associations between social support and postpartum depression symptoms among adolescent mothers in Nairobi, Kenya
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Bibliographic record
Abstract
Globally, adolescent mothers are at increased risk for postpartum depression (PPD). In Kenya, 15% of adolescent girls become mothers before the age of 18. While social support can buffer a mother’s risk of PPD, there are gaps in knowledge as to whether—and which types—of social support are protective for adolescent mothers in Kenya. Understanding the associations between support and postpartum depression symptoms among adolescent mothers can inform mental health interventions. Cross-sectional data of adolescent mothers ≤ 1 year postpartum (aged 14–19 years old) in an informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya (N = 193) were used in analyses. Participants with scores ≥ 10 on the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 were classified as having postpartum depressive symptoms. To fully examine the different ways that social support might matter for adolescent mothers, we examined several domains of social support: child’s father support during pregnancy, parental support during pregnancy, parental support of girl’s education, membership in a social club, having a good female friend and having a supportive female adult one can turn to for help. We used bivariate and adjusted modified Poisson regression with robust standard errors to examine the associations between support measures and depressive symptoms, controlling for relevant covariates. One-quarter of participants experienced postpartum depressive symptoms (24.9%). Adolescent mothers who reported their mothers or their fathers as being very supportive of girls’ education had a lower risk of depressive symptoms (ARR 0.35, 95% CI 0.20–0.61; ARR:0.34, 95% CI 0.13–0.90, respectively) than those whose mothers or fathers were less supportive. Adolescent mothers who had a good female friend to confide in had decreased risk of depressive symptoms (ARR 0.61; 95% CI 0.37–0.99). Having a mother or father being very supportive of girls’ education and having a good female friend reduced risk of depressive symptoms. With the unique challenges of early childbearing and high adolescent birth rates in Kenya, interventions which increase parental and peer support during pregnancy and the postpartum period could improve adolescent mothers’ mental health. Adolescent mothers are at increased risk for postpartum depression (PPD) as compared to older mothers. In Kenya, 15% of adolescent girls give birth before the age of 18. Social support can reduce a mother’s risk of PPD. Yet no studies focus on understanding whether social support reduce adolescent mothers’ risk of PPD symptoms in Kenya. Understanding the associations between support and postpartum depression symptoms among adolescent mothers can help in developing mental health interventions. We used data from 193 adolescent mothers ≤ 1 year postpartum (aged 14–19 years old) in an informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya. Our analysis shows that 24.9% of adolescent mothers experienced depressive symptoms. Depressive symptoms were lower for adolescent mothers who reported that their mothers or their fathers were very supportive of girls’ education. Also, adolescent mothers who had a good female friend to confide in had lower depressive symptoms. In sum, having a mother or father being very supportive of girls’ education and having a good female friend reduced risk of depressive symptoms. Interventions that increase parental and peer support during pregnancy and the postpartum period could improve adolescent mothers’ mental health.
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Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it