Scholar Journal
Journal of Science and Today's World
Journal home page: http://www.journalsci.com
ISSN 2322-326X
2014, volume 3, issue 5, pages: 164-167
ResearchArticle
The effects of yoga exercise on reduction of post-partum stress symptoms
Nasrin Jalilian1, KhodaMoradmo'meni2*, Ali Zabet3 , Maryam zabet4, Somayeh Zali pour4
Associate professor. Department obstetrics, kemanshah University of Medical Sciences, Kermanshah, Iran
Associate professor in psychology. Razi University Kermanshsh, Kermanshsh, Iran
3. PHD student in sport physiology. Islamic Azad University of Science and Research of Tehran
4 . MSc in psychology, . Razi University Kermanshsh, Kermanshsh, Iran
1
*2
ARTICLE INFO
Article history:
Received 30 April 2014
Accepted 5 May 2014
Published 7 May 2014
Keywords:
Postpartum , Sress, Yoga
*correspondence should be addressed to
KhodaMoradmo'meni, Associate professor in
psychology. Razi University Kermanshsh,
Kermanshsh, Iran.
Tel: 00989181323767
Email: Khmomeni2000@yahoo.com.
ABSTRACT
postpartum is transferring period that could suffering women as postpartum stress.
The aim of this study was investigate the effect of yoga exercise on postpartum stress
symptom. The study design was experimental with control group. from 320 women
attended the Kermanshah's medical centers 2-6 weeks after delivery were recruited to
the study. The women completed PSS scale and 40 woman that were high in this scale
selected randomly and assigned randomly into two groups, experimental and control
groups. The experimental group practice yoga for 4 weeks (3 sessions a week) and 45
minutes for each session and control group don’t. the results of pre-test and post-test
for both group analyzed by ANCOVA and by help of SPSS19 software. The results obtained from covariance analysis indicated that intervention deceased postpartum stress
symptom in experimental group (p=0/005) .it could be concluded that yoga exercise
can be applied in decreasing postpartum stress symptom
© Copyright 2014 Nasrin Jalilian al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
1. Introduction
Pregnancy and post-partum period are two critical periods in
terms of incidence or exacerbation of mental health problems, postpartum period is a transferring and stressful period which in, the
woman should accept her motherhood role and also her physical
changes. In general, most of women have some mental changes in
these days of post-partum period. About 1/3 of them experience a
period of sadness, anxiety and irritability that its amount and duration is different in different people because there are many factors
that can affect this post-partum stress. These factors include: (1)
history of mental disorder in the person (2) unwanted pregnancy,
Noli parity, a history of hospitalization due to complications of
pregnancy (3) complicating pregnancies like the complications and
medical problems of pregnancy, nausea and vomiting during pregnancy, premature contractions during pregnancy and history of
abortion (4) types of delivery, newborns' abnormalities and the
history of newborn hospitalization in NICU (neonatal intensive care
unit (5-6) baby care stress (7) dissatisfaction about gender in some
cultures (8) and not receiving adequate social support from the
spouse family and hospital staffs can all lead to the post-partum
stress.The post-partum stress symptoms appear suddenly and in 3
kinds of changes in our life conditions which are: concerns about
the role of motherhood, concerns about negative physical changes
and concerns about the lack of social supports(9-10). These changes
can also lead to post-partum stress. (11-13) and eliminate the effects of women in women in their newborns' nutrition and the physical care of the newborn, concerns about newborns' grow and de164 | P a g e
velopment, fatigue, chest pain, episiotomy and its negative effects
on sexual relations, lack of breast milk and pain of the breasts are
some sub factors that come before these 3 factors(14) although that
these anxieties have a short duration in some women but in some of
them they may be more stable and therefore may lead to chronic
mood disorders(15).Although the newborns of these mothers are
more sensitive in compare to other newborns (16) so the postpartum stress is a factor that can affect the mental and general
health of mother and newborn.There aren’t many researches related to the ways of post-partum stress reduction. It seems that the
post-partum stress can be improved by drug therapy techniques(17). which has some complications for the woman who has
passed her partum and has to feed her baby and take care of
him/her and its not affordable in terms of time and cost.Exercise is
one of the therapies for the treatment of stress and anxiety which is
affordable and more confident. Yoga is one of sports that is used for
relaxation and relieve of stresses. Its culture comes from India and
it’s a combination of the movements related to physical, mental, and
spiritual systems of the body(18). in fact, yoga is an activity which
can reduce the post-partum stress and its goal in the development
of thebalance between body systems and brain(19). and it’s a combination of stretching , respiration and concentration which leads to
the physical and mental health. Moreover, yoga can decrease the
stress (20). It is one of the most important methods of alternative
medicine that is very popular all around the world (21).In a research on the women with breast cancer, a 30 minutes yoga practice
J. Sci. Today's World, 2014, volume 3, issue 5, pages: 164-167
have lead to the stress reduction in those women before radiography(22).In another research, it decreased the anxiety and depression among hemodialysis women (23) and in another research its
effectiveness was confirmed in a comparison with other physical
educational exercises(24).There are many other researches that
have showed the positive effects of it among people(25-27) but
there is not any research yet to show the exact effects of Yoga on the
post-partum stress, so since its very important in the field of postpartum stress control, this research tries to study these effects.
1. MATERIALS AND METHODS
This is an experimental research with both experiment and control group. The statistical society of this research is a group of all the
women who have visited the public clinics of Kermanshah during
their 2-6weeks of partum and who have received the post-partum
cares and vaccination from September 15th to October 15th of 1392
in the public clinics of Kermanshah. The method of sampling was
cluster sampling which was done in several steps. First, some of the
health care centers of Kermanshah where elected and the sampling
was done among them. 3177 samples were elected and they had
responded to the post-partum stress questionnaires. Then 40 people who had a high score in PSS were elected randomly and were
divided into two groups of experiment and control. The main factors
for entering were passing 2-6 weeks of pregnancy, having a high
score in the stress scale after partum, lack of severe physical disorders, satisfaction about participation, and using the advises.
The post-partum stress scale (PSS):
This questionnaire was first introduced by Hung in 2001 for
identification of post-partum stress factors in the different studies
and researches. This scale has 65 items which are graded in the
Lebkert scale. 3 sub scales of PSS are: lack of social support (CLSS) ,
negative body changes (CNBC) and motherhood relative assignments. Also based on the results of the related studies, there is a
relationship between the Beck's depression questionnaire (BDI)
and General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)(29).Based on this study,
the coefficients of Kronbakh alpha and 3 factors of CLSS, CNBC,
CMRA are equal to 0.95, 0.85, 0.85 , 0.93 and 0.95, respectively(30).
In another research, the Kronbakh alpha and the stability coefficient
of the test were 0.93 and 0.83, respectively (31). The Persian SPP in
Iran among urban women. After defining the experiment and the
control group, the members of experiment group have attended 2
sessions of yoga. The education was done by their trainers and the
important points were thought to the mothers. After these two
meetings the mothers have practiced yoga for 4 weeks (3 sessions a
week and 45 minutes for each session). In these sessions the trainers were providing the members with helpful advices during and
after the practice and after the yoga, they were relaxing for 15
minutes, while the control group had only their daily activities.After
4 weeks, both groups have gone under a post-test and then the results were analyzed by the covariance analysis. It should be noted
that 2 members of experiment group and one member of control
group have resigned from the participation.
2. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The mean and the standard deviation of women's age in experiment group were 28.33(6.12) and 27.54 (6.88) respectively which
had no meaningful difference between two groups. There was also
no meaningful difference between education and socioeconomic
level. In experiment group, 65% of people had diploma or a higher
educational level while it was 60% in the control group. Also 55% of
165 | P a g e
women in experiment group have delivered their babies through
caesarean section and the 45% of the rest, through NID while they
were equal to 60% and 40% in the control group. The scores are
shown in table 1 for both pre- and post-tests:
Table1- the pre and post-test scores of both control and experiment
Postpartum
stress
Stag
Negative
physical
changes
Motherhood roles
Lack of efficient social
support
Total
score
Experiment group
Control group
e
Mean
Mean
Pretest
48.11
Std.
Dev.
8.71
47.11
Std.
dev.
8.69
Post
-test
Pretest
46.72
8.38
47.03
8.67
119.23
18.23
120.08
18.34
Post
-test
Pretest
Post
-test
Pretest
117.11
17.34
120.22
18.24
62.22
7.66
61.31
7.93
61.02
7.57
61.26
7.87
229.56
33.28
229.22
32.87
Post
-test
224.85
31.67
228.96
32.34
group in the scale of post-partum stress:
Based on the research target, the Mankova covariance analysis
and Ankova covariance analysis were used for analyzing the data.
According to the results we can say that the most important prediction about covariance is confirmed. It means that the slopes of lines
are equal and also the prediction about the homogeneity of variables' covariance is confirmed by the Loon test. The uni-variable covariance analysis was used for evaluation of the effects of intervention on the final level of stress. The results showed that the F equals
to 41.08 for the groups and its meaningful for p<.005. it means that
there is a meaningful difference between two groups in means of
post-partum stress.The multi-variables covariance analysis was
done to compare the control and the experimental group in means
of 3 post-partum stress factors. The results showed that these tests
are meaningful in p<0.005 and are shown in table 2. The results
showed that the yoga exercise can reduce the post-partum stress in
a meaningful way.
Table2- the uni-variable covariance analysis in Mankova on the
means of post-partum stress:
Dependent
variable
Concerns about
negative
physical
changes
Concerns about
motherhood roles
Concerns about
lack
of
social
supports
Chisquares
15.3
d
Mean
square
1
15.34
f
F
A
37.85
4
0.00
0
26.4
1
26.43
12.34
3
1
7.26
0.5
4
0.00
1
7.26
Ata
coefficient
18.53
0.2
7
0.00
0
0.3
6
4. CONCLUSION:
This research was done to study the effects of yoga on postpartum stress. These women were passing their 2-6 weeks of postpartum period. This period is a complex transferring period which
J. Sci. Today's World, 2014, volume 3, issue 5, pages: 164-167
in the family members experience a psycho-social disorder which
leads to several kinds of stress(33-35).
During this period, the mother concerns her and her baby's health
and experiences some changes in her body and also her sexual relationships.[36] In this research, a sample was elected from those
mothers who have experienced the most amount of post-partum
stress, then the sample group members were exercising yoga for
four weeks and when the routine was finished, a high amount of
stress reduction was seen among them. In general, the recent researches have shown the yoga as a variable which may decrease the
stress. Most of the times, this 9 months of pregnancy and delivery,
reduces the physical ability of the woman so yoga can increase the
physical strength and the ability of the person and it can also reduce
the cardiovascular diseases and psychological response of the person to stress(37).The measurement of brain waves before and two
hours after yoga showed that alpha radiations (related to relaxation) and beta radiations ( related to sleep, alertness and excitement) have increased about 40% which means that the brain will be
relaxed after practicing yoga and so it can help in the means of
stress reduction. So the effects of yoga on the stress reduction
among members of experiment group can be proved based on its
effects on physical- mental symptoms, improvement in concentration, flexibility. Also since these exercises were done by group their
responses were to solve the common problems and that’s why the
comparison of this research with the other related researches is too
hard. But the results of those researches which are concerning the
effects of yoga on the reduction of stress and anxiety, are the same
as the results of this research(22-27).Based on the results we suggest to help women in their post-partum period in means of yoga
learning to help them reduce their post-partum stress by using this
helpful method of therapy. We acknowledge all people who helped
us for this research specially the clinics of Kermanshah and all
mother.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
No mentioned any acknowledgment by authors.
AUTHORS CONTRIBUTION
This work was carried out in collaboration between all authors.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST
the authors declared no potential conflicts of interests with re-spect
to the authorship and/or publication of this article.
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