Immigrant and refugee women's voices: exploring postpartum depression help seeking experiences and access to mental health care
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2011
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Abstract
Recent immigrant and refugee women may be particularly at risk of less than optimal health outcomes following childbirth because of language difficulties, as well as cultural and socioeconomic factors that shape their postpartum experiences. Postpartum depression (PPD), one of the most common complications of pregnancy, can have long lasting traumatic effects on women and their families, but is also treatable. Therefore early detection and treatment of the problem is both valuable and important. While there has been research conducted on immigrant and refugee women's mental health care experiences, there is limited understanding of how these women access multiple levels of health care to deal with mental illness such as PPD, and how contextual factors such as cultural, social, political, historical, and economic influence their mental illness treatment and prevention. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore how contextual factors interacted with race, gender, and class to affect and shape the ways in which immigrant and refugee women seek help and manage their PPD. The objectives were to increase understanding of how immigrant and refugee women made decisions about postpartum care; what factors may have influenced their health seeking behaviour and what kind of strategies they would find helpful in PPD prevention and treatment. Informed by Kleinman's explanatory model (1978, 1980) and the postcolonial feminist perspective (2002) a qualitative study was conducted with a purposive sampling of 30 immigrant and refugee women in a western province of Canada. Recruitment of participants was done via health care providers and organizations that provide mental health care services for this population. In-depth interviews using semi-structured questionnaires were used to obtain information about their PPD experiences. The study's findings revealed that (a) more awareness and understanding of PPD is necessary to meet the mental health needs of immigrant and refugee women within the postpartum period; (b) women experience diverse, complex challenges and facilitators in seeking help to manage their PPD treatment and prevention; ( c) women's health care practices are influenced by both cultural background and socioeconomic, historical, and political factors which intersect with race, gender, and class; ( d) immigrant and refugee women' s resilience and coping strategies with PPD need to be recognized. Based on the study' s findings intervention strategies for PPD care and treatment, are suggested to assist with implementing and planning more culturally appropriate and equitable health care services among immigrant and refugee women living in Canada.
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Bibliography: p. 336-386.
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Citation
O'Mahony, J. M. (2011). Immigrant and refugee women's voices: exploring postpartum depression help seeking experiences and access to mental health care (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/3947