Excessive weight gain during pregnancy can have adverse health outcomes for mother and infant throughout pregnancy. However, few studies have identified the psychosocial factors that contribute to women gaining excessive weight during pregnancy.
To review the existing literature that explores the impact of psychosocial risk factors (psychological distress, body image dissatisfaction, social support, self-efficacy and self-esteem) on excessive gestational weight gain.
A systematic review of peer-reviewed English articles using Academic Search Complete, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, MEDLINE Complete, PsycINFO, Informit, Web of Science, and Scopus was conducted. Quantitative studies that investigated psychosocial factors of excessive GWG, published between 2000 and 2014 were included. Studies investigating mothers with a low risk of mental health issues and normally-developing foetuses were eligible for inclusion. From the total of 474 articles located, 12 articles were identified as relevant and were subsequently reviewed in full.
Significant associations were found between depression, body image dissatisfaction, and social support with excessive gestational weight gain. No significant relationships were reported between anxiety, stress, self-efficacy, or self-esteem and excessive gestational weight gain.
The relationship between psychosocial factors and weight gain in pregnancy is complex; however depression, body dissatisfaction and social support appear to have a direct relationship with excessive gestational weight gain. Further research is needed to identify how screening for, and responding to, psychosocial risk factors for excessive gestational weight gain can be successfully incorporated into current antenatal care.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 6. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 30 July 2018.
All research outputs
#9,433,782
of 34,447,360 outputs
Outputs from Women & Birth
#622
of 1,453 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#86,022
of 307,051 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Women & Birth
#8
of 15 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,447,360 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 72nd percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,453 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.5. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 56% of its peers.
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We're also able to compare this research output to 15 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 46th percentile – i.e., 46% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
