Date of Award

5-2021

Document Type

Project

Degree Name

Master of Social Work

Department

School of Social Work

First Reader/Committee Chair

Armando Barragan

Abstract

Military serving women and veterans are a vulnerable population that has a history with mental health issues. Military women who experience postpartum depression (PPD) must deal with outside factors such as family, deployment, and expectations from the military for their soldiers.

This study focused determining what factors have impacted the severity of postpartum depression in military service women who have had children while in service. Data was drawn from 4 respondents that were obtained using a mixture of purposive and snowball sampling. The severity of the participant’s postpartum depression was obtained through the use of the Edinburgh Perinatal Depression Scale, which showed that 2 out of the 4 respondents had probable depression while the other 2 had possible depression. The data showed five themes that were shared experiences for the women which were lack of mental health resources, high job pressure, physical stressors, race, and support systems. Findings indicated that these themes are some of the factors that affect the women’s severity of postpartum depression. Exploring the results led to understanding the importance of maternal mental health screenings, which is a more preventative approach to decreasing the symptoms and rates of postpartum depression.

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