Maternal Anxiety During Pregnancy and Childbirth Abnormalities

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Abstract
Fifty clinic patients in the third trimester of pregnancy were given a comprehensive battery of psychological tests. Following childbirth, medical records were examined for signs of delivery-room complications and childbirth abnormalities. Experienced obstetricians classified the women into a "normal" subgroup (N = 25) and an "abnormal" subgroup (N = 25). Without awareness of the delivery-room records or the obstetricians'' evaluations, the psychological test data were scored and then examined to see if the 2 groups differed on measures of anxiety derived from direct, indirect, and projective methods of assessing psychodynamics. The women in the normal and abnormal subgroups did not differ in regard to age, I.Q., gravidity, or parity. Mean total labor time was significantly longer, and variability in labor time significantly greater in the abnormal group. Statistical analyses of results obtained from various measures of anxiety showed that the only instrument not yielding significant differences was the anxiety self-rating. The manifest anxiety scale, TAT, sentence completion test, and psychologists'' clinical evaluations all showed that women who were later to have delivery-room difficulties were markedly more anxious during pregnancy.

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