Prevalence and risk factors of postpartum depression in Saudi Arabia: systematic review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Postpartum depression (PPD) is a significant mental health concern affecting mothers worldwide, with varying prevalence rates influenced by sociocultural and economic factors. In Saudi Arabia, studies report widely divergent PPD rates, necessitating a systematic synthesis of existing evidence. This systematic review aimed to determine the prevalence of PPD in Saudi Arabia and identify key risk and protective factors. Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, a comprehensive search of PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect was conducted. Twenty-two observational studies (cross-sectional, case-control, and retrospective) assessing PPD prevalence and associated factors in Saudi mothers within 1 year postpartum were included. Data were extracted on study characteristics, PPD prevalence (assessed via Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) or clinical diagnosis), and risk/protective factors. Risk of bias was evaluated using the Newcastle-Ottawa Scale. PPD prevalence ranged from 5.1% to 75.7%, with heterogeneity attributed to regional and methodological differences. Key risk factors included lack of social/spousal support (reported in 10 studies), history of depression (8 studies), cesarean delivery (6 studies), and financial stress. Breastfeeding and higher income emerged as protective factors. Most studies (15/22) had a moderate risk of bias due to convenience sampling and unadjusted confounders. PPD is highly prevalent in Saudi Arabia, with risk factors rooted in biological, psychological, and sociocultural contexts. Findings underscore the need for targeted interventions, including enhanced social support systems, routine screening, and culturally sensitive mental health policies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
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 | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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 itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".