Early Detection of Postnatal Depression and Its Associated Factors in Saudi Arabia Dalal Sami Aldossary 1* , Maha Mohammed Al-Madani 1 and Neama Mohamed Fouad Kamel 2 1 Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Saudi Arabia 2 Faculty of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing, Prince of Songkla University, Thailand * For Correspondence: Dalal Sami Aldossary, Lecturer, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Saudi Arabia, Tel: +966545882966; E-mail: Dsdossary@iau.edu.sa Received date: 05/02/2018; Accepted date: 20/02/2018; Published date: 28/02/2018 Copyright: © 2018 Aldossary DS, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Research Article ABSTRACT Aim: The aim of the study is to estimate the incidence rate of post-natal Depression (PND) and examine its associated factors among studied subjects. Design: A descriptive cross-sectional study design has been used to conduct this research. Setting: The study conducted in postnatal wards in two hospitals at eastern region of Saudi Arabia. Subject: A total of 48 mothers were participating in the study 21 mothers delivered at KFHU and 27 mothers from MCH. The study has two stages, the first stage which include all available women within the first two days of their postnatal period and the second stage is the follow up period where all women who agreed to participate at the day 12-20 postpartum through the phone call. Tool: 10-item Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) has been used in this study to find out the rate of PND and second questionnaire to assess factors which associated with PND. Results: The result shows that 35.5% of mothers have a positive postnatal depression. Also there were a positive significant correlation between PND and marital conflicts, exposure of difficult life events, gravidity, parity, newborn birth order, unwanted pregnancy and breastfeeding. Conclusion: In this study, postnatal depression was found almost in third of the mothers which give the health professional alarm to give more attention towards this problem and investigate more on it. Keywords: Post-natal depression, Breastfeeding, Gravidity, Parity INTRODUCTION Childbearing years mainly put the women at high-risk of developing a depressive state, due to increased liability to mood disorders throughout pregnancy and postnatal period [1] . According to World Health Organization (WHO) "the perinatal period commences at 22 weeks of gestation (154 days) when the average birth weight is 500 g and ends completed days (168 h) after birth" [2] . The WHO definition indicated that the term perinatal includes prenatal and one week of the postnatal periods, which is considered as a critical period. During the perinatal time the woman in risk to develop depression [3] . Postnatal period is the period from childbirth to the day 42 following birth [4] . This period is recognized as a major leading cause of disease-related disability among women in childbearing years identified in most countries in the world [5,6] . Postnatal depression considered as the most common mental health problem in women childbearing years, which refers to the period of non-psychotic depression [6-8] . The prevalence rate of PND worldwide ranging from 10%-15% [9] , PND includes minor, major and depressive events that either began within the first twelve months after birth or is a continuation of the depression of time of pregnancy. It was recommended that PND could be recognized from the third week until the end of the first year after childbirth [7,10] . While recent research highlighted on www.rroij.com Research & Reviews: Journal of Nursing and Health Sciences J Nurs Health Sci | Volume 4 | Issue 1 | March 2018 60