Psychosocial Factors and Pregnancy Outcome

Abstract

In a current prospective sociomedical study of families in a Stockholm surburb, their home environments were investigated through interviews with the mothers on their first visit to a maternity health centre when pregnant, and through data obtained from various records. In a sample of 498 mothers, 109 women with psychosocial difficulties were compared with 255 women of the same age but who were not psychosocially deprived. While taking into account biomedical risk factors and parity, it appeared that there was little difference between the groups with regard to frequency of complications in pregnancy, delivery or in the newborn infant. The existence of supportive medical and social factors could be one explanation as to why anticipated differences between the groups were not observed.