Exploring the Relationship Between Mental Illness and Pre-Eclampsia

Objective:

H1 – There is a statistically significant positive relationship between mental illness and pre-eclampsia.

H2- Women with a mental illness are at increased odds to develop pre-eclampsia during pregnancy.

H3-Women with a mental illness are at increased odds to develop pre-eclampsia during pregnancy when controlling for confounding variables.

Design:

The research design is a secondary data analysis of a large data set collected at an urban medical center in Baltimore, MD to gather information for a study examining the relationship between mental illness and pre-eclampsia. 

Setting:

Secondary data analysis

Patients/Participants:

The sample  includes all delivery hospital admissions between January 1, 2006 and December 31, 2006 at a Baltimore hospital. 

Methods:

Data was originally collected on 2678 patients.  After the application of specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, the final sample size for this study is N=2629.  Using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), analysis was run on the applicable variables to determine if any statistical significance exists between the variables of mental illness and pre-eclampsia in a three step process.

Results:  

The first hypothesis of this study was that there is a relationship between psychiatric illness and pre-eclampsia. The results of this study show 12.1% of women with documented mental illness had pre-eclampsia versus 3.9% of women without mental illness . A statistically significant relationship of mental illness with pre-eclampsia existed in the sample.

            The second hypothesis of this study was that there is a difference in the odds of pre-eclampsia in women with a mental illness compared to women without mental illness. Within this study, women with documented mental illness had significantly greater odds of pre-eclampsia compared to women without documented mental illness.

            The third hypothesis of this study was that there is a difference in the odds of pre-eclampsia in women with a mental illness compared to women without mental illness when controlling for confounding variables.  Controlling for gravidity, women with mental illness retained significantly greater odds of pre-eclampsia compared to women without mental illness.  Women with mental illness, controlling for gravidity, had nearly 3.5 times the odds of pre-eclampsia.

Conclusion/Implications for nursing practice:

Having a mental illness increases a woman's odds of developing pre-eclampsia during pregnancy.  Accurate screening for mental illness should occur during the preconception or prenatal periods to identify women at risk.  Additional research is needed to further explore the relationship between mental illness and pre-eclampsia.

Keywords: mental illness, pre-eclampsia, secondary data analysis