Tools
The participants were asked to self-complete a standardized
questionnaire during their routine outpatient clinic visits. The
standardized questionnaire consisted of sociodemographic features
including age, number of siblings, primary and other caregivers of the
child, sociodemographic features of the mother, history of any allergic,
psychiatric or physical disease in the mother/family, any medications
used for psychiatric disease, detailed dietary history including number
and categories of foods eliminated from the mother’s diet, source of
information for dietary recommendations, (physician/written
sources/internet/social environment/friends/relatives). Any weight loss
in the mother, change in volume, consistency or cessation of breast
milk, any changes in feeding frequency of infant and validated tools
assessing the psychosocial functioning of the mother were also
collected.
The validated tools were the following:
1. Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL-90R): SCL-90R is a self-administered
psychiatric symptom checklist consisting of 90 items on a likert scale
ranged from 0-to-9. SCL-90R was developed by Derogatis et al (8). and
validated in Turkish by Dag et al (9).
2. Beck Depression Inventory (BDI): BDI which evaluated the risk
and severity of depression in adults with a cut-off point of 17 points
was developed in 1961 by Beck et al. (10) and validated in Turkish by
Hisli et al. in 1989 (11).
3. Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI): BAI assesses the frequency of
anxiety symptoms composed of 21 items on a likert scale ranged from
0-to-3. BAI developed in 1998 by Beck et al (12) and validated in
Turkish by Ulusoy et al in 1998 (13).
4. Brockington Postpartum Bonding Questionnaire (Bonding):Bonding was developed to evaluate the problems of mother-to-infant
relationship on a 6-item likert scale described as “every day”, “very
often”, “often”, “sometimes”, “rare”, “never” pointed 0-5. The
questionnaire composed of 25-item, 17 of which were inversely associated
and validated (14-15). The scale consists of four subscales such as the
General factor (12 items), Rejection and Pathological Anger (7 items),
Infant-focused Anxiety (4 items) and Incipient Abuse (2 items). The
cut-off scores are General factor ≥ 12, Rejection and Pathological Anger
≥ 17, Infant-focused Anxiety ≥ 10 and Incipient Abuse ≥ 3, respectively.