Effect of Teaching Guidelines on Pregnant Women's Knowledge, Practices, and Stress regarding Postpartum Blues

Background of the study: Mood changes in the early days of postpartum are particularly common.
Postpartum blues are a common mental health problem during the early postpartum period. There
are many alternative therapies to treat this. However, Music therapy is easy to perform without any
risk, and with minimal expenses, it decreases the cortisol level in the bloodstream which causes
stress and leads to a decrease in the postpartum blues. The study aims to evaluate the effect of
teaching guidelines on pregnant women's knowledge, practices, and stress regarding Postpartum
Blues. Material and method: The research design adopted for this study is a quasi-experimental
pre-test post-test one-group design. Settings: The study was applied in the antenatal care clinics at
Sohag. Subjects: Including 100 pregnant women with a convenient sampling technique was used to
select the samples from the previously selected settings. Tools: Tool (I): Structured interview
questionnaire: Used to collect data regarding personal and Obstetric data, Tool II: Pregnant
women’s knowledge regarding postpartum blues, Tool (III): Pregnant women’s reported practices
regarding postpartum blues, Tool (V): Perceived Stress Scale-10 (PSS-10). Result: There was a
highly statistically significant difference between pregnant women’s knowledge regarding
postpartum blues pre and post-teaching guidelines implementation (p<0.001**). Before the teaching
guidelines implementation, more than three-quarters of pregnant women had unsatisfactory total
reported practice scores pre-teaching guidelines implementation regarding postpartum blues which
improved, and most of them had satisfactory total reported practice scores post-teaching guidelines
implementation. There was a significant reduction in mean post-test postpartum blues scores at
P<0.001) post-teaching guidelines implementation than pre-teaching guidelines implementation.
Conclusion: Teaching guidelines implementation had positive effects on improving pregnant
women's knowledge, practices, and stress regarding postpartum blues. Recommendation: Teaching
guidelines implementation regarding the postpartum blues should be taught to pregnant women
during the antenatal period to prevent complications associated with these problems