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Description
The Women Choose Health initiative aims to expand cross-cultural knowledge on the current decision-making process concerning treatment options (medication vs. psychotherapy vs. no treatment) of women who experience anxiety and/or depressive symptoms during pregnancy or the postpartum period. This initiative aims to understand and compare, both in Portugal and Norway, what the women’s most frequent decision is, the levels of conflict they experienced and what are the factors that contribute to their decision (by conducting a study with a sample of about 300 pregnant or postpartum women
Summary of the results
The Women Choose Health initiative results from a partnership between the University of Coimbra and the University of Oslo, and aimed to expand knowledge about the decision-making process of perinatal women regarding treatment options (medication vs. psychotherapy vs. non-treatment) when they experience symptoms of anxiety or depression during pregnancy or after birth. The data collected, in Portugal and Norway, made it possible to identify that a greater proportion of Portuguese women do not seek professional help for mental health problems in the perinatal period, and that Norwegian women present very high levels of decisional conflict about the treatment option to choose. The results of the study also made it possible to identify some factors that may contribute to the decision-making process (e.g., partner support) in both countries, with a view to sharing and promoting best practices in perinatal mental health. The main results of the study were presented in a training action, targeting relevant stakeholders in the area. With this initiative, we also intended to promote awareness about the importance of perinatal mental health in the general community; to this end, different communication strategies were devised (e.g., periodic newsletters, presence on social networks, small dissemination videos) with the aim of disseminating this topic in the community in general.