Incidence Time and Length of Hospital Stay of New Mothers for Mental Illness, New South Wales Australia

Incidence Time and Length of Hospital Stay of New Mothers for Mental Illness, New South Wales Australia

Xu F¹, Austin M-P², Reilly N², Hilder L¹, Sullivan EA¹

¹ University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

² St John of God Health Care & School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Email: f.xu@unsw.edu.au

Background: Previous work showed that there was a significant increase in psychiatric hospital admission in postpartum mothers. The current study aims to describe new mother’s incidence time and length of hospital stay for mental illness in the first year after birth.

Method:  This was a retrospective cohort study based on linked population data between the New South Wales (NSW) Midwives Data Collection (MDC) and the NSW Admitted Patients Data Collection (APDC).  The study population included primiparous mothers aged from 18 to 44 who gave births between 1 July 2000 and 31 December 2005. The Kaplan Meier method was used for the analyses of incidence time and length of hospital stay.

.Results: The mean time from birth to the first hospital admission with a diagnosis of mental illness (ICD10 F00-99) was 150.36 days (95% CI: 146.31-154.40) for new mothers in NSW and the median time was 127.00 days (95% CI: 120.17-133.83).  The entire length of hospital stay in the first year postpartum for a diagnosis of mental illness was 11.38 days for mean (95% CI: 10.70-12.06) and 6.00 days for median (95% CI: 5.8-6.3). 

Conclusion: There were 28,212 person days of hospital stay each year for depressive disorder in new mothers in NSW. The average length of stay was longer compared with the average length of stay for overall hospital separations (3.4 days from AIHW Australian hospital statistics 2004–05).