Developing a Vignette based Questionnaire to Assess Help Seeking Intention, Stigma and Perception regarding Peripartum Depression

Abstract Objectives Depression is the commonest mental health problem in pregnancy. Health seeking for peripartum depression is heavily influenced by stigma and disease perceptions which need to be studied in order to design interventions to improve health seeking. Since quantitative studies on this are scares we decided to study stigma and perception regarding peripartum depression and its association with help seeking intention among pregnant women in Sri Lanka. This paper reports how a tool was designed and validated for this study. Results A self-completed questionnaire was developed based on a vignette of a postpartum mother with symptoms of peripartum depression. Vignette was used as people are not familiar with western disease descriptions. It also provided opportunity to study how participants construct meaning to typical symptoms of peripartum depression. Stigma and perception regarding peripartum depression were presented as statements. Agreement to these statements after reading the vignette was to be marked in a likert scale. The vignette and statements were constructed following discussions with local stakeholders, assessment of diagnostic criteria, global literature and survival stories. Expert validation by a multidisciplinary team and cognitive validation by pregnant women were conducted and pretested. It was developed in Sinhalese and translated to Tamil and English.