The interrelationship between pregnancy-specific anxiety and general anxiety across pregnancy: a longitudinal study

Abstract

BACKGROUND: High levels of prenatal maternal anxiety - either pregnancy-specific anxiety or general anxiety - may have detrimental effects on both the mother and her child. It is currently unknown how these two different expressions of anxiety influence each other over time during pregnancy. AIMS: This study aimed to describe the relationship between state, trait and pregnancy-specific anxiety levels across pregnancy. METHODS: Longitudinal data from three data-waves of a large-scaled sample of nulliparous normal risk pregnant women were used to display associations over time by means of autoregressive and cross-lagged panel models. RESULTS: Cross-lagged, cross-time pathways from pregnancy-specific anxiety to state as well as trait anxiety were positively significant, while vice versa the most consistent links were found from trait anxiety to pregnancy-specific anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that pregnancy-specific anxiety and general anxiety appear to influence each other over time, resulting in heightened anxiety for some soon-to-be mothers.