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Screening for postnatal depression in Bengali women: Preliminary observations from using a translated version of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS)

Postnatal depression carries a significant health burden for mothers and their offspring. However, the majority of screening or treatment studies for postnatal depression have been carried out on white or European populations and clinicians have been appropriately cautious about applying these findings to different cultural groups. This study describes the development and use of a Bengali version of the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS). Forty-eight Bangladeshi postnatal women in both Bangladesh and England were interviewed by a Syhletti/Bengali-speaking psychologist. The translated version of the EPDS was presented in the usual way, along with a standardized interview about the degree of social support and a translated version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ). Although one item of the EPDS presented some translation difficulties, the majority of items obtained reasonable semantic equivalence and were successfully rated by the women in the study. Preliminary examination of the psychometric properties of the scale suggested adequate reliability for the scale. Higher EPDS scores had both a significant positive association with less social support and higher scores on the GHQ. While this is not a screening validation study of the Bengali version of the EPDS, the findings do provide preliminary evidence that postnatal depression screening programmes may be an appropriate and inexpensive method of identifying postnatal distress in Bangladeshi women.