Page Last Updated: October 10, 2025

Postnatal Depression🔗

Table Name:
pex_bm_epds
Full Name:
Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS)
Construct:
Postnatal Depression
This data has known issues - see details.

Administration & Quality Control🔗

Child Specific No
Respondent Pregnant Participant or Birth Parent
Administration Self-administered in-person or remote
Visits V01, V02, V03
Completion Time 3 min
Quality Control
  • Checks for missing data based on counts for items completed by each participant
  • Verification of scoring accuracy
  • Summary statistics to examine item-level frequencies and total scores
  • Review of response distributions for potential outliers

Instrument Details🔗

The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) is a sensitive, 10-item screening tool for prenatal and postpartum depression symptoms. It was selected for the HBCD Study to capture symptoms of prenatal and postnatal depression due to its ease of administration and widely accepted use.

Questionnaire prompt/instructions:

Since you are either pregnant or have recently had a baby, we want to know how you feel. MARK the answer that comes closest to how you have felt IN THE PAST 7 DAYS-not just how you feel today.

In the past 7 days…

HBCD Modification Details â–¸

In the HBCD study, a ‘Decline to answer’ option was added to all items. A ‘Don’t know’ option was also available early in data collection, but was subsequently removed. Questions answered with ‘Decline to answer’ or ‘Don’t know’ are marked as missing. In addition, scores for EPDS Self-Harm (score>1) and Depression (total score>11) triggered clinical alerts for study staff.

Scoring Procedures â–¸

Each item is scored on a scale from 0 to 3, with items 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 being reverse-scored (i.e. 3, 2, 1, 0). Total scores are calculated by summing the item responses. Note that total scores are not prorated or left missing for missing items: data users should determine how best to address missing data.

References🔗

Cox, J. L., Holden, J. M., & Sagovsky, R. (1987). Detection of postnatal depression . Development of the 10-item Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale. British Journal of Psychiatry, 150, 782–786. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.150.6.782