Racial and Ethnic Differences in Perinatal Mood Disorders among Women in the United States: A Systematic Review

Background: Perinatal mood disorders represent a major public health issue. Few studies have paid attention to the prevalence of perinatal mood disorders among racial and ethnic minorities in the United States. This study aims to determine the prevalence of perinatal mood disorders among the ethnic minority women through analysis of the previous studies.

Method: We searched Pubmed, PsychInfo, and CINAHL Plus with a comprehensive list of search items using the PRISMA guidelines. Examples of search terms included prenatal, depression, mood disorders, minority, race, or ethnic. A total of 64 combinations of search terms were used. Articles were excluded systematically from title, abstract, to full text reviews which were conducted by three authors. Risk of bias in each study was also assessed as well.

Results: We found 783 unique records in our search. 71 studies met our inclusion criteria and were analyzed. The prevalence of mood disorders varied across different studies as low as 5% to 80% which were very different. Moreover, the general pattern was that approximately 10~20% of the participants in each samples showed depressive symptoms or other mood disorders on average.

Implications: Results from this review suggest that there is a wide range of the prevalence of perinatal mood disorders among pregnant ethnic minority women. More research is needed to examine differences across specific screening tools or samples’ characteristics (i.e, SES, ethnicity, etc).