查看文章

Psy osocial functioning, body image, and pregnancy-related anxiety

 e main aim of this apter is to provide an overview of the resear that has been conducted on the association between body dissatisfaction and psy ological distress during pregnancy, in particular pregnancy‑related anxiety. As detailed in earlier apters of this book, pregnancy‑related anxiety is regarded as a condition that affects up to 14.4% of pregnant women (Poikkeus et al., 2006), and is regarded as a possible risk factor for postnatal depression (Austin et al., 2007; Heron et al., 2004; Milgrom et al., 2008; Su er-Dallay et al., 2004). Moreover, worries, fears, and concerns about body image have long been recognized as one of the cognitive dimensions of pregnancy‑related anxiety (Bayrampour et al., 2016), and this is reflected in the available measures that have been developed specifically for this form of anxiety. For example, one of the three core subscales of the Pregnancy-Related Anxiety estionnaire Revised-2 (PRAQ-R2, Huizink et al., 2016) measures concern about one’s own appearance and includes items su as “I am worried about the fact that I shall not regain my figure a er delivery” and “I am concerned about my una ractive appearance.” Similarly, a core subscale of the Pregnancy-related Anxiety Scale (PrAS, Brunton et al., 2018) measures body image concerns of pregnant women with items su as “I don’t feel good with the way I look,”“I feel scared that I will never regain my figure,” and “I worry that my partner doesn’t find me a ractive.” However, while there have been numerous studies on pregnancy‑related anxiety aimed at understanding its …