The Postpartum Obsessive-Compulsive Scale: Psychometric, Operative and Epidemiologic Study in a Portuguese Sample

Although obsessive-compulsive (OC) symptoms are common in the perinatal period, measures to comprehensively assess their presence, frequency, interference and severity are lacking. The Perinatal Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (POCS) is the only self-report questionnaire with context-specific items. It includes items to assess perinatal-specific obsessions and compulsions, a severity scale and an interference scale.

(1) to analyze the validity and reliability of the Portuguese version of the POCS; (2) to find Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) prevalence in postpartum and determine the POCS cut-off scores and its accuracy (sensitivity, specificity and predictive values) in screening for OCD according to DSM-5 criteria; (3) to describe the prevalence, content, severity, interference and onset of OC symptoms in the postpartum.

212 women in postpartum filled in a booklet, including the POCS Portuguese preliminary version, the Perinatal Anxiety Screening Scale and the Postpartum Depression Screening Scale; they were interviewed with the Diagnostic Interview for Psychological Distress-Postpartum.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis revealed that POCS presented acceptable fit indexes (χ²/df = 2.2971; CFI= 0.9319; GFI = 0.8574; TLI = 0.9127; RMSEA = 0.860, p < 0.001). The Cronbach's alphas were all > 0.800. The POCS cut-off point that maximized the Youden Index (J = 0.86, 95% CI [0.94-0.99]) was 20, corresponding to an Area Under the Curve of 0.970 (p < 0.001; Standard Error = 0.031; 95% CI: 0.937 to 0.988). The prevalence of postpartum OCD was 3.30%. The severity of thoughts and behaviors was moderate to severe for approximately 15% of women. For thirty-five percent of women, the onset of symptoms was in the first three months postpartum.

The Portuguese version of POCS has good validity, reliability and accuracy and may be considered ready for use in both clinic and research fields. POCS provides specific information regarding symptoms and individual patterns experienced by each woman, which allows normalization, destigmatization and personalized intervention.