Psychiatric outcomes after childbirth: can posttraumatic growth protect me from disordered eating symptoms?

Purpose: While many studies on mood disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following childbirth have been conducted, little is known regarding posttraumatic growth (PTG) and disordered eating in the postpartum period. This study aims to (a) identify the typology of women following childbirth based on anxiety, depressive, PTSD symptoms and level of PTG and (b) evaluate whether these profiles differ on disordered eating symptoms.

Methods: Up to 2 years after childbirth, 306 French-speaking mothers [mean age (SD) = 29.4 (4.6) years] completed questionnaires assessing PTSD, depressive, anxiety and disordered-eating symptoms and level of posttraumatic growth.

Results: Four profiles were highlighted: a first one labeled growing cluster (22.2 % of the sample, n = 68), a second one labeled low level of symptoms cluster (37.6 % of the sample, n = 115), a third one labeled vulnerable cluster (21.6 % of the sample, n = 66) and a last one labeled anxious-depressed-traumatized cluster (18.6 % of the sample, n = 57). Our findings also highlight an impact of these profiles on disordered eating symptoms, suggesting that disordered eating in postpartum would not be the result of pregnancy.

Conclusion: Consistent with our expectation, our findings suggest a potential protective role of posttraumatic growth on the development of disordered eating symptoms. Further researches focusing on traumatic experience, disordered eating and posttraumatic growth in postpartum are warranted.