Factores psicosociales asociados a un alto, medio y bajo riesgo de síntomas depresivos en el posparto inmediato

objectives: evaluate psychosocial factors associated to depressive symptoms during the immediate postpartum period. methods: a total of 45 argentine puerperal women hospitalized in a public maternal hospital of buenos aires, argentina, were interviewed on the 1st and 3rd day postpartum from march to december 2010. aiming to assess the presence of depressive symptoms, the edinburgh postnatal depression scale (epds) was administrated. the perinatal psychological interview was administrated to explore psychosocial variables. based on the scores obtained in the epds, the sample was separated in three different groups with increasing risk of depressive symptomatology: "negative or low risk", "positive medium risk" and "positive high risk". cut-off scores were 9 and 19 points. results: out of the total psychosocial variables analyzed, statistically significant differences were found among the three groups regarding family violence, migration, previous history of depression, depressive symptoms during pregnancy and increasing number of life events. conclusions: the setting of two cut-off scores in epds allows the early detection of women with depressive symptoms. it is suggested the usefulness of cut-off value of 19 for early detection of women at high risk to developing postpartum depression.