Maternal mental health and social support from online communities during pregnancy*

Social determinants of public health have gained increasing attention. This paper studied whether social support from online communities related to maternal mental health. We focused on online maternity communities that group users with a similar prenatal status to facilitate their exchange of personal experiences and knowledge about maternal caring during pregnancy. Such online maternity communities are getting increasingly popular and can be found across countries and societies. We invited users-currently pregnant and gave birth within 1 year at the time of the study-from one such community in China to participate in a survey. The survey measured their perceived social support (PSS) exclusively from the peer group in the online community, their mental health and newborns' birth outcomes (N = 500). Users reported high score in PSS from the online peer group which was comparable to the ones from family, significant other and friends in other studies. We used linear regression models to examine the effects of PSS on mental health and birth outcomes. We found that a one-point increase in the PSS score was associated with a 0.19-point (p < 0.1) decrease in the prenatal depression and a 0.26-point (p < 0.01) decrease in the postnatal depression, which was equivalent to 3% and 4.5% of the average respectively. Moreover, a one-point increase in the PSS score was associated with a 14.49-gram increase in a newborn's weight (p < 0.01).