Assessing psychosocial risk in pregnant/postpartum women using the Contextual Assessment of Maternity Experience (CAME)--recent life adversity, social support and maternal feelings.

Background: The Contextual Assessment of Maternity Experience (CAME) interview was developed to characterise the psychosocial context relevant to the maternity experience by providing a detailed picture of women's lives during the transition to motherhood. More specifically, it was designed to enable the assessment of major risk factors for emotional disturbances in pregnant and postpartum women, especially depression, within the same instrument and using a coherent methodological framework.

Method: The CAME assesses three domains relevant to motherhood: 1) recent life adversity or stressors; 2) the quality of social support and key relationships including partner relationship; and 3) maternal feelings towards pregnancy, motherhood and the baby. Two high-risk samples of inner-city London women were used to test the psychometric qualities of the CAME components.

Results: Overall, the internal consistencies of the relevant components were high in both samples examined. The validity of the three components of the measure was evidenced by their association with either maternal characteristics or parenting assessments.

Conclusion: It was concluded that the CAME shows promise as a measure of the psychosocial risk factors involved in the maternity experience for future research in this field.