A Study to Assess the Stress among Antenatal Women Admitted for Safe Confinement at a Tertiary Level Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala

Aim: To assess stress among antenatal women admitted for safe confinement and to find stress level and related factors for stress. Identifying the level of stress will help to develop interventions to reduce the stress. Objectives: i) To find out the level of stress experienced by antenatal women. ii) To find out the association between level of stress and selected socio-demographic and clinical data of antenatal women. Method: A quantitative research approach-descriptive cross-sectional survey design was adopted. 60 samples were selected for the study by using purposive sampling technique. Results: It is identified that 1% of selected antenatal women had no stress, 73% had mild stress, 25% had moderate stress and 1% had severe stress. After calculation of chi square values, it is identified that there is association between stress level and selected sociodemographic variables (occupation) and also there is significant association between stress level and clinical data (parity). Conclusion: Majority of women in their antenatal period experience varying stress. 73.33% of them had mild stress where as 26.66% experienced moderate stress. Extreme levels of stress including no stress and severe stress were very rare ie, 1%. Multiple factors have association with their stress level. Present study documented significant association with parity and occupational status of women.