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An evaluation of symptom domains in the 2 years before pregnancy as predictors of relapse in the perinatal period in women with severe mental illness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2021

Sharvari Khapre
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, United Kingdom
Robert Stewart
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, United Kingdom South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, London, United Kingdom
Clare Taylor*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF, United Kingdom Women’s College Hospital, 76 Grenville Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1B2, Canada
*
*Address for correspondence: Clare Taylor, E-mail: clarabella18@hotmail.com

Abstract

Background

Symptoms may be more useful prognostic markers for mental illness than diagnoses. We sought to investigate symptom domains in women with pre-existing severe mental illness (SMI; psychotic and bipolar disorder) as predictors of relapse risk during the perinatal period.

Methods

Data were obtained from electronic health records of 399 pregnant women with SMI diagnoses from a large south London mental healthcare provider. Symptoms within six domains characteristically associated with SMI (positive, negative, disorganization, mania, depression, and catatonia) recorded in clinical notes 2 years before pregnancy were identified with natural language processing algorithms to extract data from text, and associations investigated with hospitalization during pregnancy and 3 months postpartum.

Results

Seventy-six women (19%) relapsed during pregnancy and 107 (27%) relapsed postpartum. After adjusting for covariates, disorganization symptoms showed a positive association at borderline significance with relapse during pregnancy (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 1.36; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.99–1.87 per unit increase in number of symptoms) and depressive symptoms negatively with relapse postpartum (0.78; 0.62–0.98). Restricting the sample to women with at least one recorded symptom in any given domain, higher disorganization (1.84; 1.22–2.76), positive (1.50; 1.07–2.11), and manic (1.48; 1.03–2.11) symptoms were associated with relapse during pregnancy, and disorganization (1.54; 1.08–2.20) symptom domains were associated with relapse postpartum.

Conclusions

Positive, disorganization, and manic symptoms recorded in the 2 years before pregnancy were associated with increased risk of relapse during pregnancy and postpartum. The characterization of routine health records from text fields is relatively transferrable and could help inform predictive risk modelling.

Information

Type
Research Article
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
Figure 0

Table 1. Grouping of symptom-ascertaining natural language processing algorithms into categories.

Figure 1

Table 2. Association between symptom domains and relapse during pregnancy and postpartum.

Figure 2

Table 3. Associations between socio-demographic characteristics and relapse during pregnancy and postpartum (n = 399 women).

Figure 3

Table 4. Multivariable analysis of symptom domains and relapse in pregnancy, with symptom variables entered as ordinal categorical variables, N = 399 women, 74 with relapse in pregnancy.

Figure 4

Table 5. Multivariable analysis of symptom domains and relapse in postpartum, with symptom variables entered as ordinal categorical variables, N = 399 women, 107 with relapse in postpartum.

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