Comparison of psychosocial health status of high and low risk pregnant women according to conclusion of prenatal screening test

This study was conducted in a descriptive type to compare the psychosocial health of women with low-risk pregnancies and high-risk pregnancies according to prenatal screening test results. The study was carried out with pregnant women with a gestational age of 11-22, who applied to the Karadeniz Technical University Farabi Hospital Obstetrics Clinic between January 2021 and February 2022. The sample size in the study comprised 330 pregnant women in total, 165 of whom had high-risk pregnancies, and 165 had low-risk pregnancies, determined at 90% probability according to the comparison of the difference between the averages in the Openepi program. Pregnant women with a risk (definite or suspicious) in any of the prenatal screening tests (double, triple, quadruple, nifty, etc.) were considered as "high risk", and those without risk were considered as "low risk". The data were collected face to face through "the pregnant descriptive information form", and "The Pregnancy Psychosocial Health Assessment Scale (PPHAS)". The data were evaluated by Student-t, Mann Whitney U, Variance, and Kruskal Wallis analysis in the SPSS program. In the study, the results of prenatal screening tests of pregnant women show "suspicious risk pregnancy" in 64.2% of women with a high-risk pregnancy, "high risk pregnancy" in 35.8%, and "low-risk pregnancy" in all women with low-risk. The mean PPHAS total score in women with high-risk pregnancies was found to be "lower" than in low-risk ones, but the difference in the mean score was not statistically significant (p>0.05). The mean score of "anxiety and stress, pregnancy and spousal relationship, and the need for psychosocial support", which are three sub-dimensions of PPHAS, was found to be "lower" in high-risk pregnancies than in low-risk pregnancies, and the difference was statistically significant (p<0.05). The comparison of the sub-dimensions, "domestic violence, familial characteristics, physical-psychosocial changes related to pregnancy", of PPHAS in low-risk and high-risk pregnancies was not found significant (p>0.05). As results, according to the results of prenatal screening test, the risk of deteriorating psychosocial health (negative impact) of women with high-risk pregnancies is higher than those with low-risk pregnancies in terms of the characteristics of "pregnancy and spousal relationship", "anxiety and stress" and "need for psychosocial support".