Pathological perfectionism can be defined as a characteristic of personality that may include excessive concerns to make mistakes, doubts about the actions to be taken and on the quality of the actions taken, excessively high personal performance standards, self -criticism and perception of high expectations and critics from others, need for order and organization, intolerability for errors.
It is a feature that may have important repercussions on people’s quality of life, significantly decrease the sense of self -efficacy and personal self -esteem, up to leading to real psychological disorders, including anxiety, depression, food problems, obsessive compulsive, as well as personalities and relational. Some studies have found an association between the presence of pathological perfectionism and post-partum depression.
The pregnancy and the birth of a child can be configured as risk periods for the development of psychological problems of various kinds and literature has found that some personality characteristics influence the risk of developing a depression in the postpartum period. Also high levels of anxiety and depression preceding childbirth would seem to be risk factors to develop a depression after the birth of the child.
The longitudinal studio conducted by Oddo-Sommerfeld, Hain, Louwen and Schemelleh-Engel (“Longitudinal Effects of Dysfunctional Perfectationism and Avoidant Personality on Postpartum Mental Disorders: Pathways Though Antepartum Depression and Anxiety”) and published on the Journal of affective disordersinvestigated the effect of perfectionism and preventive personality traits, both intended as personality characteristics, on three important mental health indicators of the postponement in women: depression, anxiety and quality of the mother-child relationship. The sample on which the research was conducted was made up of almost 300 women, mostly primapa and with a good level of schooling.
Dysfunctional perfectionism is considered here above all in relation to the presence of two aspects: concern to make mistakes and doubts about actions; For damage to the mother-child bond, reference is made to a disorder of the emotional relationship, with the absence of maternal feelings, refusal, irresponsibility and sometimes aggressive impulses.
It was found that the levels of depression previously present at childbirth had a direct impact on the levels of anxiety and depression present after childbirth, configuring themselves as the most important risk factor. The damage to the mother-child relationship was influenced directly only by the levels of post-partum depression, while the other variables considered had a only indirect effect, mediated by the same post-partum depression itself.
The study has not found direct effects of dysfunctional perfectionism and avoidant personality on the levels of anxiety, depression and damage to the link in the postpartum; However, a significant indirect effect has been detected through the levels of anxiety and depression previously present at childbirth: pathological perfectionism and the characteristics of avoidance personality present before childbirth influenced the levels of anxiety and depression preceding the birth, which in turn directly influenced the levels of anxiety and depression present after the birth.
Furthermore, the influence exercised by pathological perfectionism on depression, post -birth anxiety and quality of the bond was stronger than that exercised by the characteristics of avoidant personalities. It would therefore seem that the combination of personality characteristics considered with the psychological difficulties prior to childbirth significantly increase the risk of distress in the post.
The results therefore support the hypothesis that dysfunctional perfectionism and the characteristics of avoidant personalities can be configured as risk factors for post-partum depression, for postponement anxiety and for the damage to the mother-child bond.
As indicated by the authors themselves, this suggests the importance of taking into consideration the assessment of these variables in prenatal screening, in order to be able to evaluate the risk for the woman to experience psychological difficulties in the postpartum and be able to adopt adequate prevention strategies.
In addition, and consistently with the data already known in the literature, these results once again suggest the importance of evaluating the levels of anxiety and depression during pregnancy, given their mediation effect on the personalities of personality assessed.
