Determining he relationship between alexithymia and depression in pregnant woman

Study; It was conducted in a descriptive design to determine the relationship between alexithymia and depression in pregnant woman. The population of the study consisted of women who applied to the obstetrics and gynecology clinic of a university hospital located in the Western Black Sea Region of Turkey. The sampling included 242 pregnant women identified by the G Power analysis. The data of the research are "Personal Information Form", "Beck Depression Inventory" and the "Toronto Alexithymia Scale". Pearson chi-square test, Fisher test, Shapiro-Wilk test, Spearman Correlation and multiple logistic regression analysis were used in the analysis of the data. As a result of the analysis, it was determined that 23.1% of the pregnant women had depression and the depression inventory mean score was 11.41±8.48, 35.5% had alexithymia and the total mean score of the alexithymia scale was 46.45±8.65. It was found that the mean score of "Difficulty Identifying Feelings", which is one of the sub-dimensions of the alexithymia scale, is 14.98±4.83, the mean score of "Difficulty Describing Feelings" is 11.62±3.13, and the mean score of "Externally-Oriented Thinking" is 19.85±4.35. Pregnant women's Beck Depression Inventory total scores and difficulty" in "recognizing their emotions" (r=0.380, p<0.05) and "difficulty in expressing their emotions" (r=0.310, p<0.05) sub-dimension scores and Toronto Alexithymia Scale total scores (r=0.338) , p<0.05) was found to be positively moderately correlated. It was found that alexithymic status, socio-demographic, health and obstetric characteristics of pregnant women explained approximately 35.8% of the change in depression. According to this, it was found that depression is 0.678 times less common in non-alexithymic pregnant women, 3.098 times more common in first trimester than third trimester, and 0.785 times lower in first pregnancy than in women with 4 or more pregnancies. In this direction, it has been suggested that screening for alexithymia and depression in pregnancy should be a part of prenatal care services, identifying risky people and providing early support and treatment, and conducting scientific studies examining alexithymia and depression in pregnant women with larger samples and different methods. Keywords: Alexithymia, Depression, Difficuly identifying feelings, Pregnancy Pregnant, Woman