The prevalence of panic disorder in pregnant women during the third trimester of pregnancy.

OBJECTIVE

The principal aim of this study was to assess the current prevalence rate of panic disorder (PD) in pregnant women during the third trimester of pregnancy. The second aim of the present study was to investigate the clinical characteristics of PD in pregnant and nonpregnant women.

METHOD: The study data were gathered from 512 consecutive women in the third trimester of pregnancy who were admitted to the obstetric outpatient clinics of 2 university research centers. The diagnosis of PD was determined by means of the Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition Axis I disorders in the third trimester of pregnancy. Within the same period, the Panic and Agoraphobia Scale was used to determine the severity of PD. In addition, we compared the clinical characteristics of PD in gravid subjects (n = 13) with their control group. A control group was composed of 19 consecutive nonpregnant female outpatients diagnosed with PD who presented to the psychiatric outpatient clinics of the same hospitals.

RESULTS

The prevalence rate of PD was found to be 2.5% (n = 13) among the subjects in the third trimester of pregnancy. Of these 13 pregnant, 7 subjects reported that PD developed during the 6th to 28th weeks of their gestation, and the number of subjects who experienced PD symptoms before pregnancy was 6. In addition, there was no statistically difference between gravid and nongravid PD cases with regard to the severity of panic symptoms.

CONCLUSION

Our study suggests that PD may be common among pregnant females during the third trimester of pregnancy and seems to be associated with similar clinical features during gestation and nongestation.