Key Takeaways
Extended Takeaways
- Disclosure appears sensitive to how clinicians ask: studies using perinatal-specific thought lists and normalizing information found prevalence estimates above 8.0%, and in this cohort the period prevalence from birth to the second postpartum interview was 9.2% (n = 38; 95% CI, 6.6–12.4).
- Most sexual-harm UITs were intermittent rather than persistent across postpartum assessments: among 324 participants with both interviews, 4.8% (n = 16; 95% CI, 2.8–7.7) endorsed them early only, 2.5% (n = 8; 95% CI, 1.1–4.8) late only, and 2.2% (n = 7; 95% CI, 0.9–4.4) at both.
- The most commonly endorsed sexual-harm thought was “touching your baby’s genitals in an inappropriate way,” reported by 8.5% (n = 35; 95% CI, 6.0–11.6), whereas “being ‘turned on’ sexually by your baby” and “touching your baby in a sexual way” were less frequent at 2.9% (n = 12; 95% CI, 1.5–5.0) and 1.7% (n = 7; 95% CI, 0.7–3.5).
- Timing of follow-up did not explain endorsement of sexual-harm UITs, supporting that prevalence estimates were not simply inflated by longer observation: participants who did and did not report these thoughts were assessed at mean = 21.21 weeks and mean = 21.31 weeks postpartum, respectively (z = –.301, P = .763; χ21 = 0.03, P = .873).
- When sexual-harm UITs occurred alongside physical-aggression UITs, they were associated with greater obsessive burden in time but not in distress or impairment: compared with PHYS ONLY (n = 138), PHYS + SEX (n = 33) had more time-consuming thoughts (z = –3.46, P < .001), with no difference in distress or impairment (P = .083 and .956, respectively).
